Bayfield Family’s $9m charge of the Light Brigade Hotel

Sydney’s Bayfield family has spent more than $9 million buying The Light Brigade Hotel in Paddington, just months after offloading pubs icon the Newport Arms Hotel to Merivale Group.

“As a family, we’re far from done in an industry we know so well,” says Bayfield Hotels chief Wayne Bayfield.

The family, which holds its pub assets in the unlisted public company Liquor Marketing Group, netted close to $50m in March when bar tsar Justin Hemmes’ Merivale added the northern beaches institution to its growing stable of up-market watering holes.

The Light Brigade purchase, which is understood to have transacted for around $9m, adds to the Bayfield’s portfolio which includes the Dee Why Hotel, the Newport Mirage and a liquor ­distribution business.

Andrew Jolliffe and Joel Fisher of Ray White Hotels brokered the deal, which comes at the end of a month in which more than $100m of hotels has changed hands, including Medich family assets the Woolloomooloo Bay Hotel and the Woolwich Pier Hotel.

Demand for pubs has reached its highest point in more than five years, according to Mr Jolliffe, who noted that strong consumer spending levels have boosted trading conditions at the same time groups including Merivale, Solotel and Redcape are showing an appetite for expansion.

The Light Brigade, which sits on the corner of Oxford Street and Jersey Road, attracted more than 80 inquiries in the sales campaign.

The vendor was Haritos Hotels, which has owned the pub for more than eight years, during which time it refurbished and upgraded the pub’s interior.

Source:  The Australian - 24th June 2015