Guinness Peat sells Adnams stake

Guinness Peat Group (GPG), the activist shareholder with stakes in a number of the UK's leading brewers and pub groups, has sold its stake in Adnams for around £2.2m.

GPG owned 5.4% of the total share capital in the Suffolk brewer and pub operator.

The investment company, which has still has stakes in Young's, Thwaites, Shepherd Neame and Fuller's, said in February this year that it would return at least £75m to shareholders this year as it planned to sell off its asset portfolio, leaving the investment holding firm with just its thread manufacturing business.

GPG had criticised the running of the Plus-listed Adnams a number of times over the years.

In 2009, it called for the company to dismantle the "anachronistic dual share structure" that gives the Adnams family and other long-standing backers effective control — an echo of the ultimately successful campaign it waged against Young's, the London brewer.