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Two hotels in the portfolio of flamboyant businessman, David Hattersley, have been successfully sold in the wake of the collapse of his property empire last year.

Guy Fawkes and Marmadukes Hotel, both in York, have been sold for an undisclosed sum to one unidentified buyer. The sale was carried out by Colliers International, who had been enlisted for the task by joint administrators, Phil Pierce and Andrew Sheridan, of Baker Tilly Restructuring and Recovery.

The two hotels were among a cache of businesses that went into administration last year, leaving Mr Hattersley with a bank debt of at least £4 million.

Speaking on the sale, the director of Colliers International in Leeds, Peter Bean said, "[The hotels] created a high level of interest from buyers attracted by their high-quality facilities and outstanding trading locations in this major tourist destination city which continues to perform well."

He added, "The whole process from first viewings to completion of the sales took about five months."

Marmadukes Hotel, in St Peter’s Grove, York, has a restaurant, lounges, meeting room and 20 bedrooms. Guy Fawkes, which is located in a prime spot opposite York Minster, and has 13 bedrooms, a bar and restaurant. Marmadukes.

Hattersley spent £20m in less than three years building an impressive property portfolio throughout York, but declared bankruptcy in October after his de Bretton Hospitality Group and property group, D & SJ Hattersley Properties, collapsed.

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Six weeks after being appointed, administrators at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) have announced that Gravetye Manor Hotel and Country Club has been sold to a new entrant to the hotels market and that the business will continue to operate as a hotel.

Gravetye Manor is a Grade 1 listed Elizabethan manor house located seven miles from Gatwick Airport on the East Sussex/West Sussex border. It has iconic status as one of the UK's first country-house hotels. Featuring 18 luxury en-suite bedrooms, a bar and private dining room, a restaurant and extensive staff accommodation, it is set in 35 acres of historic gardens and 1000 acres of ancient woodland.

Joint administrator and partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Karen Dukes commented: "We are delighted to have agreed a sale of the hotel just over 6 weeks after our appointment and with minimal disruption to the staff and guests. We received a number of expressions of interest in this prestigious hotel from all over the world, showing there is still appetite for investing in the right businesses as we come out of a recession."

She went on to say that the sale means that the jobs of all 45 employees will be secured.

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Pub chain Enterprise Inns has sold seven of its sites in London, raising £12 million from the auction.

The auction took place on Wednesday and each sale was offered to investors as a freehold with a 35 year lease and a break clause at 25 years, subject to six months notice.

This latest auction, through Allsops, brings the pub firm’s public auction income to £47 million. It says it may continue to raise as much as £200 million through the public auction route.

The pubs for sale this time included the Cumberland Arms in Hammersmith, which went for £1.68 million; The Lillie Langtry in Fulham, which made £1.41 million; the Northumberland Tavern in Tottenham, which raised £2.13 million and the Nellie Dean in Soho, which fetched £2.1 million. Each pub was sold with a different rent, ranging from £80,000 a year to £155,000 a year.

The sales have been lucrative and buyers are reportedly easy to come by, says Enterprise. The pub giant attributes this to the low rates of interest offered to high-net-worth individuals who are keen to make the most of cheap borrowing.

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The business sale story of the decade (so far) has ended in defeat for that sweetest of British institutions: Cadbury. After maintaining last month that it would not be swayed by a revised offer from US food giant Kraft, the confectioner's board advised shareholders to give in and accept the cheese manufacturer's proposal of 840 pence per share, valuing the company at £11.5 billion.

Attention in the Midlands – home to Cadbury's Bournville factory – immediately turned to the inevitable job cuts expected to take place as Kraft embarks on a cost-cutting exercise to cover the amount spent on the takeover.

"We have great respect for Cadbury's brands, heritage and people," insisted Irene Rosenfeld, chairman and chief executive of Kraft Foods. "We believe they will thrive as part of Kraft Foods."

Kraft's previous offer for the maker of Dairy Milk, Milk Tray and Flake valued the company at £10.5 billion – a bid described by Cadbury chairman Roger Carr as an attempt to buy the firm "on the cheap".

Speaking to Sky News today, he said the final decision to sell the business was sad but the "right thing" to do nonetheless: "At the end of the day, Kraft have paid a price that the shareholders believe is at the tipping point of recognising tomorrow's price today."

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News of a pub sale with a difference reaches us this week, after two residents of a tiny Herefordshire village stepped in to stop their much-loved local falling into the hands of property developers.

Leintwardine's Sun Inn, one of the nation's last parlour pubs, was being put up for sale at auction until local businessmen Gary Seymour and Nick Davis came along with their offer after rallying around to raise the necessary finance. Though the sum they paid for the pub remains under wraps, we do know it was expected to fetch up to £300,000 from eager bidders.

The tale of the Sun Inn pub sale began when owner Florence 'Flossie' Lane – said to be Britain's oldest landlady, aged 94 – passed away in June after 74 years at the helm.

A "Save the Sun" crusade was launched by villagers and backed by the Campaign for Real Ale, whose representatives describe the pub as "a national treasure".

The 200-year-old establishment doesn't have the bar or counter familiar to seasoned pub-goers. More like an old-fashioned living room, customers serve themselves from barrels on the floor and deposit their cash in a jam jar.

Its new owners – one of whom runs a chip shop next door to the pub, and the other a brewery – say they don't plan to change much about the Sun Inn, focusing instead on promoting local beers and ciders.

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After a year that saw it narrowly avoid going into administration, put up for sale and subsequently acquired by Smiths News, Norwich-based book wholesaler Bertrams is now looking to acquisitions of its own.

The positive progress is down to a £500,000 profit posted by the book and library supply business for the five months to the end of August, a boost that can probably be attributed to a handful of million-pound deals with the Daily Mail and some libraries in Scotland.

Managing director Michael Neil acknowledges that "the business performed very well" in the wake of previous parent company Woolworths' collapse last November. He puts the success down to a rapid rebuilding of stock levels following the March takeover by Smiths.

"When Smiths News bought us, we were running at around half capacity," he explains to The Bookseller. "I thought it would take around four months to get it right, but our stock situation was sorted within six weeks."

The fact that customers didn't desert the business while things were looking shaky helped too, he grants, though he also highlights that the recession does not appear to have dented the book trade in the same way it's hit other retailers.

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Small business veterans keeping an eye on hotels for sale in the UK may like to take note of what pub owner Thwaites had to say about last month's sale of the Stafford Hotel in Mayfair.

Philip Johnston, head of hotels at Savills (who advised Thwaites on the multimillion-pound sale), said the deal with leisure firm Britannia Hospitality highlighted renewed investor appetite in the hotel sector – "for the right asset, marketed carefully".

Granted, he also pointed out that the £77.5 million purchase represents one of the biggest such deals seen in London in the last two or three years – though it wasn't quite the £100 million the hotel's shareholders had hoped for.

Thwaites – probably best known for its Lancaster Bomber and Nutty Black ales – has around 400 pubs and nine Shire Hotels on its books, and it owned the 105-bedroom Stafford for 14 years before putting it up for sale at the end of 2008.

Representatives for the East Lancashire brewery have said the funds from the hotel sale will help them pay off various business loans, as well as leaving them well positioned to finance "appropriate development opportunities" in the future.

"The sale of such a trophy asset and prime piece of real estate is good news for us and the market overall," concluded Philip Johnston.

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