Punch Taverns plc is pleased to announce that it has today completed the restructuring of its long term securitised debt finance. The refinancing of existing floating rate notes and the issuance of additional fixed rate notes has taken total securitised debt to £1.825 billion, all of which is investment grade rated.

After repaying existing short-term bank facilities, the refinancing will make approximately £265 million of new cash available to the Group whilst reducing the average overall cost of our securitised debt. The cash interest cost of the securitised debt has fallen from 7.7% to 7.2%.

Further details will be given at the preliminary results announcement to be held on November 6th 2003.

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