Land Securities, Britain's largest commercial property company, has hired a trio of veteran City and industrial executives as it accelerates plans for a three-way break-up.

Analysts predict that the division of Land Securities into three businesses - Trillium, its London operations and its retail concerns - increases the likelihood of takeover activity for each separate company. Sir Christopher Bland, former chairman of both BT and the BBC's board of governors, joined the board of Land Securities yesterday to step into the new role of chairman at Trillium, the company's property outsourcing and PFI division.

Rick Haythornthwaite, chairman of Mastercard, has joined the group board to become chairman of a separately quoted retail business owning £6.7 billion of shops, large shopping centres and retail parks and which will be run by Francis Salway, chief executive of Land Securities. Mr Haythornthwaite won plaudits in the City when he ran Blue Circle, the cement company, for first seeing off a hostile cash bid from Lafarge, of France, then agreeing a higher £4.7 billion bid from the French company. He oversaw the restructuring of Invensys, a heavily indebted engineering conglomerate.

Kevin O'Byrne, the group finance director of DSG International, the electrical goods retailer, has joined the group board as a non-executive. He fills a gap left by Sir Win Bischoff, a director for more than eight years, who is stepping down after his appointment as chairman of Citigroup.

The new appointments allow Paul Myners, group board chairman of Land Securities, to concentrate on his next role as chairman of the company's soon-to-be demerged London business. It is worth about £8 billion and is composed largely of City and West End offices, along with a large new retail development opposite St Paul's Cathedral.

Mr Salway, the chief executive, confirmed yesterday that sales talks were continuing with a number of bidders for Trillium, worth about £1.5 billion. Suitors are thought to include the infrastructure funds of Macquarie, the Australian bank, Cinven, the private equity firm, and funds run by Goldman Sachs, the bank that formed the Trillium business a decade ago.

Land Securities is working with bankers at Citigroup on demerging Trillium as a separately quoted business. Bankers at UBS are advising the group on twin-track sales talks.

Mr Salway and Mr Myners announced plans to break up the company in September but they said at the time that the process could take at least a year, with timing dependent on the re-opening of the debt markets after the credit crunch.

Last month, analysts for Merrill Lynch forecast that a £5 billion debt refinancing was needed to get the demerger away, which was “impossible” in the present climate. The costs of refinancing the bonds alone would be around £280 million, Merrill said.

Mr Salway said that the new board appointments were a “good stepping stone” to the break-up but dismissed concerns about the cost of refinancing.

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