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Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal
- afavour 8mo agoAn illustrative lesson to anyone who joins a startup with the promise of a ton of stock: the company can make it worthless whenever they feel like it. Always remember that. As for Brewdog itself, there’s a lesson in VC mindset there as well I think. Everything doesn’t have to grow to be massive. You can stay a sustainable size if you want to. But alas the temptation to keep expanding is always too strong, and often leads to flameouts like this.
- nailer 8mo agoBrewdog also sold useless stock to customers > And they said no equity holders - including those who invested in the brewer's Equity for Punks scheme - would get any return from the deal.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- bell-cot 8mo agoNot a Brit - but I've been seeing "times get even worse for UK pubs, with yet more closing" stories for years now. And the BBC seems torn between lambasting a corporation for screwing the little guys...and admitting that the whole works was a hopeless money-loser, with a mountain of debt.
- testfrequency 8mo agoBrewdog is pretty much a TGI Fridays that’s pretending to be edgy. People very much don’t like their beers, the atmosphere feels fake, and there’s significantly better options in any major UK city. It’s a shame they are closing and I feel for the employees, but nobody local really believes they are a respectable place, touristy really. While UK nightlife/drinking/pubs like every other city in the world is slower since COVID, I still have many friends from around the world who come visit and can’t believe how busy our cities and nightlife are compared to their city back home (NYC, SF, LA, Berlin, Sydney to name a few).
- nailer 8mo agoBefore Brewdog if you wanted IPAs in 2000s england you paid 8 quid for a single small bottle of imported Racer 5 from Utobeer in Borough Market. They weren’t the entire change but they were a big part of it.
- testfrequency 8mo agoOh no doubt, credit where credit is due. They served a purpose, but like anything cool in life, expansion and profits ate their soul and there are obviously so many better places to enjoy a pint (or grapefruit) these days :)
- edoceo 8mo agoI'm sure we're in agreement that, at least in UK, there's been better pubs for 200+ years. I don't know why to go to a chain-pub with some mega-factory beer when the old-local serves a fine bitter from the same county. Am I old?
- rozab 8mo agoI'm not sure how old you are, but I understand that that UK beer culture is in a great place now compared to the 80s, partly due to CAMRA.
- nailer 8mo agoYes it's a bit of a generayional shift. In the 2000s when I moved the UK it was all real ale. If you wanted to drink a pinecone of an IPA the Utobeer option above seemed like the only option. But I'm a millenial. Liking IPAs is a millennial trope and younger people like less intense flavours.
- michaelt 8mo agoHasn’t the UK had CAMRA supporting small breweries, opposing monoculture, and running beer festivals with hundreds of different beers for like 50 years?
- tene80i 8mo agoPubs have been in decline for years, because people don't go / drink as much, and because of our starting position: this is a country where there are pubs everywhere. But Brewdog is a chain of pubs and a brewery – this is much larger than the standard story of "village supporting three pubs can now only support two". As for the "torn" reporting, there's no contradiction – companies can go bust ethically or unethically. You don't have to screw your retail investors / fans. You just can. And they have.
- tsak 8mo agoThat's not very punk, is it?
- bonesss 8mo agoStealing the money, faffing off, and not fully knowing how to play guitar? … it’s a kind of punk.
- mikkupikku 8mo agoI've been hearing buzz that the whole alcohol industry is in trouble, from a perfect storm of cultural changes that culminate in young people drinking less, and particularly drinking less in bars. With that context, it seems notable that the booze company in question here was purchased by a "beverage and medical cannabis" corp.
- badgersnake 8mo agoThey just stated slowly appparently: https://www.ft.com/content/1ae55e45-64a6-463a-b04b-198ee324115e https://www.ft.com/content/1ae55e45-64a6-463a-b04b-198ee3241...
- mikkupikku 8mo agoMaybe so. But it's not just the price of booze which is the problem; other problems include online dating (meeting people is now less of a reason to go to bars), cultural apprehensions about hooking up while drunk, and cannabis providing a superior experience (at least in the US, maybe less of a factor in the UK?)
- medwards666 8mo agoCannabis in the UK is still illegal, so unless you're picking up weed from your local dealer, it's not a big thing outside the home. But price of booze is killing pubs here. Getting close to £8 a pint now in London. £10 for a pint of Guinness in many bars.
- ducktastic 8mo agoA few years ago there was a group formed in the UK to designate cask ale/pub culture to be recognized as intangible cultural heritage through UNESCO-- following Belgium's successful foray into its brewing/beer culture being designated this way. There are a few documentaries on youtube
- 8mo ago
- TheChaplain 8mo agoNo conspiracy here. Brewdog had a loss of 37m GBP last October, and went into something similar to Chapter11(?), american company bought the remains and saved what had any value left. So not really "evil company buys good company and fires everyone" IMHO. edit: useless at spelling...
- klustregrif 8mo agoEvil company took money from customers with promises of a different kind of company, too their own fortune in hiding and let the company explose the face of the customers is the news. You might say "but that's nothign new" but that is what makes it news because Brewdogs campaigns where exactly focues on selling cutomers the idea that they where inf fact something new. The fouders are rich any any customers who invested is left with nothing. That's the news. I know the times are changing and people now take it for granted that a cab driver might be selling heisenbergs securities while he drives around customers, for someone to pick up a bit of crypto gambling while they wait to reach their destination. But it used to be that financial investment was somewhat protected exactly to avoid these types of companies defrauding non-investment savy customers, but brewdog did just that. They claimed that getting a couple of shares along with your beer was ok because it was a new type of company sticking it to the man, but at the end of the day they wheren't punks they where just capitalists putting on customes to scam as much money from their customers as possible.
- bix6 8mo agoFrom the guardian: “But about 220,000 investors, who contributed £75m in crowdfunding across seven “equity for punks” rounds, could walk away with nothing.” I used to love the idea of crowdfunding but then I watched a bunch of people buy worthless common stock and get hosed over and over.
- roughly 8mo agoAs George Carlin said, “it’s a big club, and you’re not in it.” Capitalism is not for the little guy, or at least not the version we’ve built.
- carl_dr 8mo ago… they’ve built.
- AndrewKemendo 8mo agoAre you living in a separate system that’s not associated with capitalism? If so I’d love to know what that is so I can go there.
- daedrdev 8mo agoNo equity holders get anything here, regardless if they had common stock or not
- ericmay 8mo agoIt's a good quote, but it is misapplied here. Nothing is stopping you from investing in a company, or putting your money into a stock or other investment. If anything, over the years the club has become a lot less exclusive. When did Carlin say that? Think about how much more access any given person, at least in the United States, has to financial products.
- pwdisswordfishy 8mo ago... it's from 2005, at the height of such access, so much so that a glut of "toxic assets" led to a worldwide recession.
- roughly 8mo agoIs “have been made redundant” normal phrasing in the UK, or did the BBC just decide to use that kind of bloodless phrasing for “fired?”
- pelagicAustral 8mo agoIs the bloodless phrasing for "sacked"...
- roughly 8mo agoI mean is it in common enough use that it shouldn’t stick out to me that a newspaper decided to use it instead of “fired,” “sacked,” or “laid off?” It’s got a whiff of “was involved with a shooting.”
- jebarker 8mo agoIt’s very common phrasing in the U.K.
- alias_neo 8mo agoIt has legal implications, as others have expressed. It means your position was made redundant, and it allows you to be terminated with little legal complication, but on the understanding that the same position can't be re-hired for within a period, I think it's 6 months. Of course in reality it's not that simple, you get "made redundant" then they rephrase the job title a bit and hire someone else. Redundancy in the real, proper form is a consultation process where they will try, if possible to relocate people into other positions, government does it all the time when there's cuts, and they'll often offer voluntary redundancy where they pay you X amount to quit, it's usually a reasonable sum and should leave you with more than enough cash in "normal" circumstances to find another job comfortably, or see you through to retirement if you're pretty close. Sometimes it's just a way to get rid of people who are shit or you don't like. If you're gonna lose your job, being made "redundant" is the way you want to do it.
- 8mo ago
- AndrewKemendo 8mo agoSeems like a collapse of the alcohol market would be a benefit on the order of removing leaded gas But don’t let my biological logic stand in the way of cultural madness - if a coherent society in your view requires a poison in order to facilitate then that society is probably not worth keeping going
- rahimnathwani 8mo agoThe article says: In 2017 a US equity firm TSG Consumer Partners acquired a 22% stake in Brewdog. But unlike the Equity for Punks' "ordinary" shareholders, TSG was given "preference shares". That meant that if Brewdog was sold, TSG was first in the queue to get back its investment plus any return owed, possibly leaving little or nothing for small investors. It seems the preference shares weren't just 1x liquidation preferences. The 'plus any return owed' was 18% per year if, as I imagine, those shares are the 'C Preferred Shares' described in Brewdog's Companies House filing on 7 Jun 2017. ("Statement of capital following an allotment of shares on 6 April 2017"): 5 Statement of capital (prescribed particulars of rights attached to shares) Class of share Preferred C Shares Prescribed particulars Amount") shall be applied as follows: 1. an amount shall be distributed among the holders of the Preferred 'C' Ordinary Shares which shall be the greater of: a) the Deemed Acquired Price of all Preferred 'C' Ordinary Shares together with, in respect of each Preferred 'C' Ordinary Share an amount equal to 18 per cent of the Deemed Acquired Price per year (based on a 365 day year) accruing daily and compounding annually from the date of issue up to and including the date of the return of capital; and b) such amount of the Distribution Amount as would be applied to the holders of the Preferred 'C' Ordinary Shares if they ranked pari passu with 'A' Ordinary Shares and 'B' Ordinary Shares; and 2. any balance of the Distribution Amount following the application of the amount referred to in (1) above shall be applied to the holders of the 'A' Ordinary Shares and the 'B' Ordinary Shares (in accordance with the terms of the Articles of Association), provided that in the instance that Article 6.2.1(a) applies, the Warrant Shares shall have nil value for the purposes of Article 6.2.2. Any return on Preferred 'C' Shares shall be made amongst their holders pro rata as nearly as possible to their respective holdings of Shares of that class. This may seem like a lot, but it's a common structure for private equity deals, and we have no way of knowing whether that's the best deal that Brewdog's management could have struck at the time.
- x0x0 8mo agoI think you are mistaken. The pages are split -- see that closed quote and parenthesis. That quote is a continuation from pdf page 3, which has the opening parenthesis. Each of the cells for classes A, B, C overflow onto one page (each) that follows. So the C holders are entitled to a distribution on sale or repurchase, but not an annual distribution. > The Preferred 'C' Shares are entitled to receive dividends (and shall rank equally with the 'A' Ordinary Shares and 'B' Ordinary Shares). On a return of the entire capital of the Company or a winding up (other than a redemption of Shares or the purchase by the Company of its own Shares), the surplus assets of the Company available for distribution among the members (the "Distribution ... which leads into your quote above. Frustratingly, it seems to be impossible to link these pdfs directly.
- crmd 8mo ago20+ years in tech and finance and I still can’t believe liquidation preferences are legal. Even among shareholders, a group of insiders in a conference room can self-deal to keep all the money for themselves and screw common stockholders who had no representation in that room.
- KellyCriterion 8mo agoWell, thats what "free markets" (tm) allow you to do (-:
- KellyCriterion 8mo agoFor the downvoters, I do not know why: This is actually percisely one of the main ingredients of a "(whatever) free market" - to put in a contract what you want as long as it is not against the law. ?
- general_reveal 8mo agoBy the time most of us are dead, I think we’ll have enough evidence that human systems mostly don’t work (this is a personal realization, just for ourselves, no one will be able to strip you have the realization). If it worked for you, congrats, you were lucky.
- nradov 8mo agoWhat sort of evidence are you looking for? The current general system of free-market capitalism and multiparty democracy has created an unprecedented era of prosperity for those of us lucky enough to live in (relatively) civilized countries. There are lots of problems that we need to fix but on average by almost any objective metric the situation is better than ever.
- general_reveal 8mo agoThe thing about people in comfort is that they literally do not understand the concept of one too many on a fundamental level. One dollar is not enough. Similar, one person that goes without, that’s not enough either. You need millions to go without before the wrinkles even show up on some people’s faces. “One too many” ills shatters the benchmark of “life is good”. Not good enough (that much … you may actually understand). We have been deficient, through and through.
- neilv 8mo ago> About 200,000 people put money into the scheme, which offered a stake in the company, [...] But unlike the Equity for Punks' "ordinary" shareholders, TSG was given "preference shares". Is the UK about to see public demand for investment reform? We could use reform in the US lately. I'm not seeing many experienced people who believe in startup equity anymore, nor who are aligned with the success of the company. (Except for founders and VCs.)
- gib444 8mo agoMore of the UK being bought up by the US. It's relentless
- perrohunter 8mo agocan you tell how the headline is crafted to make feel the aquisition is a bad thing?