London’s pub tycoons and the fall of the indie boozer

As the capital's independents struggle, empires grow

Morning — there’s a good chance you’ve never heard the name Asif Aziz. But in some London neighbourhoods, he’s well-known — for the spree of pub closures linked to his family’s £2bn property empire.

We have to admit, we were a bit nervous when today’s guest writer, John Lubbock, first approached us about this piece. John wanted to explore a seemingly innocuous question: who owns London’s pubs? Inevitably, though, that would mean brushing up against some powerful players in the capital — such as Aziz. When John has previously reported on the activities of the Aziz family’s companies in London, for Byline Times and Novara Media, he’s come up against legal threats and bamboozlement. It’s been all bark no bite, thankfully, but it was enough to make the editors of this fledgling London mag sweat.

For now, at least, the lawyers have been quiet about today’s piece. John has carefully put together an investigation into pub ownership in London, exploring the tycoons and companies that have built up boozer empires in the past few years. And more to the point — what it all means for regulars when their London local gets acquired. There’s a clear trend to it all: the city’s independent pubs are under threat, a fact that was apparent even before the recent pressures from price hikes and energy bills. The statistics on independent ownership are now particularly dire in some areas. Who owns London’s pubs is below.

But maybe the lawyers won’t be so quiet one day. We think the Spy wouldn’t be worth the, er, emails it’s printed on if we were afraid to dig into London’s rich and powerful. And as a city magazine in Manchester is finding out at the moment, sometimes that can come with serious legal risk. One thing paying for a subscription to the Spy does, aside from giving you full access to our reports, is it funds us getting legal support. Just five extra paid subscribers would be enough for us to afford a monthly meeting with a media lawyer on a potentially controversial piece — and those are exactly the pieces we want the Spy to be the home of in London. So please consider supporting us using the buttons below.

👀 Also: eyes peeled in the coming days for our ultimate GE2024 London guide 🗳️ following the PM’s snap election announcement yesterday. We’re pulling together everything to know about the capital’s key battlegrounds, the main campaign issues and what experts predict will happen across London on July 4 — landing in your inbox soon.

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Who owns London’s pubs?

By John Lubbock

The mood was bittersweet at The Junction’s last gig on September 7, 2022. The pub, on Coldharbour Lane just outside the centre of Brixton, had first opened in 2015, a rare newcomer in the growing boozer desert around Loughborough Junction. But after seven years, it was now saying goodbye — staff and regulars had been invited to one final night of live jazz music, the kind of free event the pub had become famed for. The local press was invited too, with a Brixton Buzz reporter photographing the musicians and crowd paying their last respects. One name definitely hadn’t made the guest list, though: Asif Aziz, the property tycoon whose family company managed the site.

The Junction in 2015. Credit: Ewan Munro