Nomura International is to sell 130 of the 982 managed pubs it bought from Bass in February.
The first disposal came this week, with the sale of 13 pubs to St Albans-based company Wizard Inns in a deal thought to be worth more than £7m.
The 982 pubs, now renamed the Voyager Pub Group, make up the bulk of the 988-strong estate bought by Nomura for £625m.
Voyager is planning to convert 850 of these from managed to tenanted pubs over the next two years.
John Denning, chief executive of Voyager, said the 130 being sold were likely to end up with other managed pub operators.
The 13 sold to Wizard are split between the Midlands, London, the Home Counties and the south-east of England. The acquisition will bring Wizard’s estate up to 47 pubs.
All the staff and managers will transfer to Wizard when the deal is completed later this month.
Wizard declined to say exactly how much it had bought the pubs for, beyond calling it a “significant” sum.
Nomura’s Principal Finance Group, with Royal Bank of Scotland, is also Wizard’s principal backer, meaning the 13 pubs will remain within the Japanese investment bank’s orbit, despite the transfer of ownership.
David Liston, brewing analyst at stockbroker Gerrard, said it was a sellers’ market at the moment, with a lot of operators and venture capitalists interested in snapping up prime sites.
Possible candidates to cherry-pick the estate included Punch, Pubmaster and Enterprise Inns, he suggested.
“There is still a reasonable market for reasonable, quality assets at the moment. I would not have thought Nomura would have any difficulty selling them,” he said.
by Nic Paton