Family-owned brewer and pub business Brains has put itself up for sale, according to a report in The Sunday Times.
Alastair Darby appearing on BBC News in October
The company has experienced a slowdown in trading this year, and rising costs and has hired advisers from investment banking specialist Evercore.
Chief executive Alastair Darby has constantly argued that pubs are being unfairly targeted by the government’s covid policy.
The brewery has 160 pubs, but they didn’t all survive the first lockdown. Many employees have already lost their jobs.
Prior to the firebreak lockdown, Darby told BBC News: “You know, you can’t just keep chipping away at an industry, knocking it down, expecting it to get back up again in great shape.
“Every time we lose turnover, we lay off people, we have to close pubs, sell pubs, the business gets smaller and weaker, and that will be be not just us, that will be affecting everybody in this sector.”
