City loses its thirst for Fuller

THE redundancies cloud hanging over the City appears to have a silver lining - it is easier to get served in City bars than ever before. Fuller, Smith & Turner, brewer of London Pride and the biggest landlord in the Square Mile, today said its 25 watering holes in the financial district were suffering badly from the lack of thirsty executives hanging around for a few pints after work. Chairman Anthony Fuller said: 'The City is quiet.'

While lunchtime trade continued to be brisk, Fuller's pubs and bars are still relatively empty in the evenings eight months after the 11 September terrorist attacks on the US. 'There don't seem to be the younger City people who are more likely to stay in the City after work,' Fuller added. 'I guess there have been big redundancies among those younger workers.'

Fuller said his bars had been worst hit while the more traditional City pubs had been more resilient. Elsewhere, Fuller told a happier tale of improving sales in its pubs outside the City and surging beer sales both to the pub trade and supermarkets. Its £2m Whatever You Do, Take Pride advertising campaign, marked a 5% bigger advertising cost but with the extra beer being sold, only came to about £11 per barrel sold.

After costs of exiting its unsuccessful Broadwalk and Katabetic bars ventures, pre-tax profits in the year to 30 March fell to £10m against £19.3m last year on sales of £132.4m against £128m last time.

Burtonwood Brewery moved up 5p to 242 1/2p after it booked a 9.3% rise in full-year profits to £7.9m and said it is already in talks to acquire a number of new sites. Sales were £47.9m against £46.7m last time, and the total dividend is up 7.3% at 8.85p