Finland's Hartwall family, owner of nearly 12% of Scottish & Newcastle Plc, said it had no plans to reduce its stake in the British brewer in the near future, despite being freed to do so, Reuters reported. The Hartwall family holds about 101 million shares in S&N after the family-controlled Hartwall company was bought by S&N for 1.2 billion pounds ($1.9 billion) last year.

The family is free to sell the stake - worth about 350 million pounds ($550 million) -- from Friday under the terms of the deal, but it said it would not do so. "We've been in the beer business for 167 years, we like the business and we want to stay there as long as we think it's a good investment," he said.

Erik Hartwall is managing director of the Hartwall family holding company and a non-executive director of S&N. Erik Hartwall declined to say how long he expected the family to hold the shares, but said it was "very relaxed" about recent weakness in the share price.

S&N, whose brands include Kronenbourg and Foster's, bought Hartwall to gain access to the Russian and eastern European beer markets through its Baltic Beverages Holdings (BBH) joint venture with Danish brewer Carlsberg.

Analysts at investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston this week cut their price target on S&N shares to 350 pence from 385p, citing the end of the Hartwall lock-in period, "leading to possible placings", as one of several negative issues that could dog the shares.

28 February, 2003