That man gets everywhere. Just a couple of days after raising his stake in Mitchells & Butler, property entrepreneur Robert Tchenguiz has unveiled a 3% stake in leisure group Whitbread.
His R20 business has just declared an economic interest through contracts for difference in 5.5m Whitbread shares.
It is unclear when he built up the stake but if it was over the past few days, he would already be sitting on a tidy profit.
Analyst Mark Brumby at Blue Oar said he doubted it was the precursor to a bid: "Tchenguiz's name may not inspire the boardroom fear that it did pre the debt crisis and raising funds is by no means as easy as it was.
"Similarly, CFDs do not vote, boards may be less easy to influence than they were pre the M&B hedge debacle and times have generally changed. Nonetheless, Whitbread is a tremendous company and the least that Tchenguiz has done is to make an extremely shrewd and well-timed investment."
Tchenguiz's modus operandi with M&B and indeed Sainsbury's was to try and unlock what he saw as hidden value. Whitbread could conceivably convert into a tax-efficient real estate investment trust, but would have to split into an operating business and a property company, which would cost serious money to do.
Even so Whitbread is now 24p higher at £13.96.
