Ei Group

The company was founded by Ted Tuppen, initially with 300 pubs from Bass, as Enterprise Inns in 1991. The company listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1995. and 4,054 pubs with the acquisition of the Unique Pub Company in 2004. Enterprise Inns had over 9,000 pubs on completion of the acquisition of the Unique Pub Company and it formed part of the FTSE100 Index at that time. However, the decline in the UK pub trade led to its removal from the FTSE100 in 2008. Due to its high level of debt the company stopped paying dividends to shareholders in 2009. Ted Tuppen stood down as chief executive in February 2014 and Enterprise Inns rebranded to Ei Group in February 2017. In July 2019 Stonegate Pub Company announced its intention to acquire Ei Group for £1.27 billion. That same month and year, Stonegate pursued the acquisition of Ei Group in a £3 billion deal which will "add almost 4,000 new pubs to Stonegate Pub Company’s 765 existing locations". ==Operations==

The pubs are operated by tenants, which means that the company collects rent from individuals who operate and often live in the pubs. They also operate (in most, but not all cases) what is known as a beer tie. This means that tenants renting public houses from them are under contract to buy beer, ciders, alcopops and other alcoholic drinks from Enterprise Inns only. Under some leases tenants are required to also purchase other products, such as soft drinks, wines and spirits from Enterprise, although this is not as widespread as the beer tie. ==Reflections on business practice==

On 12 May 2009, The Guardian newspaper reported how "Enterprise Inns counts cost of bad pub landlords": the recession had forced the company to take action against more than 100 "poor quality and underperforming licensees" since last autumn. It is spending £1.4m a month on financial assistance to help those in distress, on top of the £700,000 a month cost of freezing the price of five lager and ale brands. Chief executive Ted Tuppen told The Guardian: "If people are genuinely struggling and will work with us, we are providing an awful lot of help". The cost of these programmes was however contributing to a slump in profits. On 13 May 2009, the House of Commons published a report regarding a monopolies inquiry into pub groups. The report "raises a series of questions about the pub company (pubco) tied pub business model and calls on the Government to act urgently, in particular, to refer the matter to the Competition Commission. It challenges the pubcos which operate a tie to prove its benefits by giving lessees the choice between a tied or free of tie lease." The report also raises issues regarding the actual conduct of pubcos in dealing with struggling tenants. The Committee commissioned its own independent survey as part of the inquiry, to determine whether the negative evidence it initially received from lessees was typical of feelings in the industry. In 2008, one tenant who felt forced to close the pub he ran with his wife said: "We told Enterprise [Inns] we were struggling and needed some help; they didn't come forward with any. If we were late paying bills we would get threatening phone calls. They could have put a hold on the rent or given us a discount until we managed to get business back up. If we didn't pay bills on time they wouldn't deliver the beer and when they did deliver it they would charge us for carriage. Instead of helping us they were making it worse." The MPs are said to also want a ban on pubcos selling pub premises with restrictive covenants that prevent them being used as pubs in the future. Ted Tuppen explained the need for covenants to the committee by saying there are too many pubs in some areas and Enterprise used restrictive covenants "because, genuinely, we think these are pubs that have lived their life". However, he admitted that 70% of Enterprise sales have such covenants in place. Shortly following the committee's report, CAMRA issued a super-complaint forcing the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to investigate this within 90 days. The OFT published its report on 22 October 2009. The report largely cleared the industry of behaving in any way that caused damage to consumers. ==References==