Mean Fiddler re-affirms plans to seek market flotation

The London-based music promoter, Mr Vince Power, has reaffirmed his plan to float his Mean Fiddler company on the stock exchange in the new year. The group is also selling its existing live music venue in Wexford Street in Dublin and seeking a larger alternative premises.

The 4,300 square foot venue, split over two floors, was formerly the Wexford Inn and was bought by the Co Waterford entrepreneur with a business partner, Mr Kieran Cavanagh, in 1994, for about £1 million. It is being sold as a going concern and could fetch in the region of £3 million. Its upstairs live music area has a capacity for about 520, while the downstairs fits about 300 people.

In late 1996, the venue ran into serious difficulties and, with debts of £400,000 owed to the Revenue Commissioners and about £200,000 to trade creditors, a liquidator was appointed for a time. Mr Power later bought Mr Cavanagh out for an undisclosed sum.

Mr Power said he was seeking an alternative but bigger venue in Dublin because the Wexford Street premises was too small to play well-known bands. He was competing with larger venues such as the Olympia and the new Vicar Street in the Liberties.

The gap in the market, he said, was for audiences of between 2,500 and 3,000, and he hoped to acquire premises which could be used both for concerts and as a stand-up venue.

He has recently purchased the former railway station building near his home place, at Tramore, Co Waterford, which he hopes to convert into a hotel. Last year, he announced his intention to float his company, Mean Fiddler Music Promotions, on the London Stock Exchange, and this week he said the plan was for the flotation to go ahead in the spring, although "nothing has been confirmed". He was not considering an Irish listing, he said, because he was based in London.

The plan will be to raise equity for the other part of Mr Power's business - running open-air concerts or fleadhs. He intends to extend the success of the Finsbury Park fleadh beyond New York, where it was launched in 1996, to other US cities and to Canada and Australia. In Ireland, he has announced the staging of a fleadh at Leixlip Castle, Co Kildare, next year, and the return of the Lisdoonvarna festival, in Co Clare, in 2000 after a gap of 17 years.

He says the Lisdoonvarna fleadh will be held on the same site as the original festival and will be bringing in "some of the new and the old". "We are dependent on the weather for festivals, but a large part of our business is themed bars and pubs," he says. Mr Power has 18 premises in London, including the Forum in Kentish Town, the Jazz Cafe in Camden and the Clapham Grand. The Dublin Mean Fiddler is his only Irish outlet.

He added that, although the premises was not making a loss, it was "only using 50 per cent of its potential".