your local pub

When Arthur Laundy's dad was a young publican, life was more obvious. What you saw was what you got. Australia's enemies were defined by national boundaries and your local pub was owned, or at least controlled, by the man or woman behind the bar.

What brewers didn't own was almost entirely in the hands of single-pub operators. That's changed. With the 1997 arrival of poker machines in pubs came acceleration of what analysts call consolidation - the concentration of pub ownership in corporate hands, often in the form of family interests.

Records show that of NSW's 2000 hotels, almost 400 are owned or operated by 43 groups each owning at least four pubs. More are owned in lots of two and three. But consolidation didn't begin with poker machines. And real estate values and economies of scale, as much as gaming, are likely to propel takeover activity in the years ahead.

This trend of acquisition and accumulation, of alliances and of intergenerational family pub holdings is best illustrated by the rise and rise of Arthur "Spike" Laundy.

"I've been written up as a pokie baron but when they came in I already had about 15 hotels, and I was travelling very, very well," says Laundy, who spent much of the 1970s buying, boosting and selling before he got enough equity to hold on to his acquisitions as he expanded.

A publican since he was 21 - 45 years ago - he owns about 40 hotels ("I don't keep count") and sits on the board of National Leisure and Gaming, which is run by his sons Stuart, the acting chief executive, and Craig, and Andrew Jollife. NLG has 37 pubs nationally, with its NSW freeholds owned by Cairns-based Tom Hedley, who has acquired 60 hotels and other liquor outlets since selling his pubs business to the Coles retail group last year for $330 million. The alliance between Hedley, a plumber until his first country pub acquisition in the late '70s, and the Laundy family is the most telling in a rash of newly forged associations reshaping pub ownership.

Separately again, Laundy's mum and sister (his father, also Arthur, was killed in a plane crash in 1969) own another six to eight hotels. Collectively, then, the family and its allies control more than 80 hotels, delivering them access to the multimillion-dollar revenues of 2000 poker machines.

Laundy is none too keen on revealing personal financial details. If his pubs are worth the reported $500 million, he's not saying.

"They're not for sale so I never worry much about that. I keep buying." Doesn't he have any idea? "I wouldn't tell you if I did," he replies with a firm smile.