It is not easy running a pub company nowadays. Business has been hit hard by the smoking ban, duty rises, the recession, cut-price competition from supermarkets and two summers of bad weather. No wonder pub operators, many of which are also facing looming debt refinancing deadlines, have more or less been relegated to the “do not touch” file by investors.

Yet Rooney Anand, chief executive of Greene King, is not crying into his beer. Shares in the Suffolk-based brewer and pub operator have fallen by just 2.4 per cent over the past year – compared with respective declines of 68 per cent and 66 per cent at larger rivals Punch Taverns and Enterprise Inns – as shareholders have seen the value of the group’s diversified business model.