FRENCH luxury goods group LVMH said yesterday it had sold part of its stake in British drinks giant Diageo for £736 million sterling. "We have always said that our Diageo stake was a liquid asset and therefore sellable," a spokesman for Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton said. "We are selling because the price is attractive" and not because LVMH needed the money, he added.

LVMH sold 134 million Diageo shares at 549 pence per share, the spokesman said. This represents about 4 per cent of Diageo capital and reduces the French group's stake to below 3 per cent.