Punch Taverns chair Stephen Billingham: I came for the challenge
Stephen Billingham knew his time at Punch Taverns wouldn’t be a walk in the park, in fact he says that was exactly why he came: “I enjoy doing interesting things, these challenges are part of the appeal to come in and get involved.”
But when he joined as chairman in 2011, not even Billingham could have predicted just how long the road ahead would be. “It’s been three years of hard going,” he says. “I haven’t had one week off in the last 12 calendar months, but despite that, it’s been a very good experience.”
Billingham’s role took an unexpected turn in January 2013 due to the surprise departure of the-then chief executive Roger Whiteside, propelling Billingham into the role of executive chairman responsible for the whole group.
“Pushing the business to improve at a time when we were trying to launch a restructuring has been an interesting challenge,” he says. “The good thing is that we’ve managed to return to income growth, the first time in five years or so.”
Despite his best efforts, four sets of restructuring proposals put forward over the past two and a half years have failed to garner meaningful support from lenders. Then in May, Billingham had a breakthrough.
“When we put a debt-for-equity swap on the table I think people realised that we could actually end up with a default. Where previously a lot of the sentiment was that Punch would continue to support the debt structures and therefore [lenders] would never have to negotiate,” he says.
Now Billingham is on the verge of success, with a record 65 per cent of the firm’s lenders on board to support his restructuring, but Billingham isn’t relaxing just yet.
“We haven’t got any major blockers out there, but what we always worry about is if anyone has a 25 per cent stake in any of the 16 debt tranches they could still block the deal,” he says.
“So we’re going to continue to lobby people and we’re obviously going to talk to shareholders to make sure we get 75 per cent of them on board as well.
“Hopefully, if we can get this restructuring to bed, then I can finally go out and start looking for a new chief executive.”
