It’s probably stretching it a little to imagine that Whitbread’s shareholders are starting to rue the sale of Costa Coffee. The £3.9 billion that Coca-Cola paid for the high street chain in 2018 represented a price tag so rich and frothy that it would have been almost perverse to reject it; some of the leisure group’s biggest shareholders had been pushing for a disposal or spin-off, after all.
Yet it would be of little surprise if some of Whitbread’s owners are beginning to ask themselves what they’ve been left with — being the operator of Premier Inn budget hotels in Britain and Germany, with a smattering in the Middle East.
Whitbread was founded as a brewery in 1742 and during its history it has
