Enterprise Inns has raised £50m through a share placing as part of the financing of its £609m acquisition of the Unique Pub Company.

Enterprise already owns 16.8 per cent of the company, but plans to exercise an option agreed when Unique was sold by Nomura for £2.01bn in 2001, to acquire the balance of the company from its venture capital owners.

The company had intended to finance the deal entirely through debt and had received confirmation of this from its banks. However, Enterprise was forced into the placing of eight million new ordinary shares by Moody’s Investors Service, which had threatened to downgrade Enterprise’s bonds credit rating.

The placing price has been set at 630p per share and the new shares will be admitted to the London Stock Exchange on 10 March.

Enterprise has announced that since its AGM on 22 January, trading has continued to be strong with results for the six months to 31 March anticipated to be in line with expectations. Unique is also trading well, and Enterprise expects Unique’s EBITDA to be at least £235m for the year to September 2004.

When the acquisition is complete, the 4,000-strong Unique portfolio will increase the Enterprise estate to over 9,000 pubs, bypassing Punch Taverns – which operates 7,700 properties following its purchase of Pubmaster for £1.2bn last year – to become the UK’s largest pub company.