Pub firms fail to fill top spots

IT sounds like the perfect job: a fat salary, an expensive company car and all the drinks you could want on the house. So why are City headhunters finding it so difficult to fill senior vacancies at a number of Britain's biggest pub chains?

Pubmaster, which is hoping to complete its purchase of Nomura's Inn Partnership pub chain in the next few days, is the latest company to join the search for executive talent. Chief executive John Sands is moving up to become executive chairman from the beginning of March.

In his new role, he will be scouting the country for further potential acquisitions, leaving a vacancy for someone to run the operations side of the company from Pubmaster's head office at Hartlepool in the North-East.

Pub groups Unique and Voyager, part of Guy Hands' Terra Firma Capital Partners outfit, have been trying without success to fill two top vacancies since October. Unique's chief executive, Giles Thorley, defected from the 3,260-strong chain to take on the challenge of floating rival Punch Pub Company on the stock market. Just a week later, it emerged that John Denning, chief executive of Voyager, had also quit.

Voyager is being run by Mike Kinski, formerly of Stagecoach. He was hired in July to oversee a review of the pub operations, but has been drafted in to fill Denning's shoes until a replacement is found.

All this is proving to be a bonanza for headhunter Whitehead Mann. Not only has it been given the task of filling Thorley and Denning's shoes, it has also been hired by pubs and brewing group Wolverhampton & Dudley to find a finance director.

The previous incumbent, Jim Taylor, lasted only six weeks before quitting abruptly three months ago. Paul Inglett, director of planning, was made acting finance director to fill the gap, but the company is still looking for a full-time replacement.

And recruitment consultants are rumoured to be working on finding a successor to Scottish & Newcastle executive chairman Brian Stewart, though the company has poured cold water on the suggestion.

Nigel Popham, leisure analyst at stockbroker Teather & Greenwood, said: 'There is a dearth of natural talent in the pub industry. Now that bigger companies such as Allied Domecq, Whitbread and Bass have got out, there are fewer potential leaders coming in at the bottom and being trained up. There are also too few leading lights at the top.

'It shows how much the pub sector has diminished in the stock market. Working for private companies such as Pubmaster or Nomura is probably not so appealing compared with working for a blue-chip company.'

However, James Hyde, director at Whitehead Mann, said that the sector was still in favour with the ambitious. 'It will always attract driven people who rise to a challenge,' he said.