Dixon & Singleton beef up pub portfolio
Tourism Australia chairman Geoff Dixon and investment banker Mark Carnegie have beefed up their pub portfolio, buying Brisbanes Elephant & Wheelbarrow Hotel from the Adelaide-based Independent Pub Group.
The pub, on Wickham Street in trendy Fortitude Valley, on the edge of the Brisbane CBD, is about to be renamed the Elephant Arms Hotel.
Paddy Coughlan, executive director of the entrepreneurs’ Australian Pub Fund, put the value of the acquisition, flagged by The Weekend Australian in February, at between $27 million and $29 million.
The Australian Pub Fund has also bought the Bristol Arms in Sydney’s Sussex Street for around $8 million and Mr Coughlan said the fund was looking to grow the Brisbane portfolio “pretty quickly”.
‘’It’s a pub town and the real estate cycle is about a year behind Sydney,” he said.
The vendor of the Bristol Arms was Redcape Property Fund.
All up the fund, backed by Mr Dixon, John Singleton and his son Jack, advertising executive Alan Johnson and with institutional funding from a major super fund, has amassed ten pubs valued at more than $120m, said Mr Coughlan.
‘’It is starting to become substantial, we are starting to get some critical mass of pubs,’’ Mr Coughlan said, adding that a trade sale or float would be considered within the next 12 to 24 months.
Separately, Mr Dixon spent more than $4m on buying and renovating a historic pub, the Plough and Harrow Inn, at Camden in Sydney’s south-western suburbs, in a deal also flagged by The Australian.
Mr Dixon, APF's chairman, said the Fund had recently acquired $65m of new capital to invest and was targeting in excess of $100m of equity commitments.
Source: The Australian, 18 April 2013
