Holders of about 10 per cent of Scottish & Newcastle shares would be willing to sell to rivals Carlsberg and Heineken if the consortium raises its offer to 775p a share, a new independent survey has found.

Sixty per cent of those S&N shareholders polled said they believed that management should start talking to the bidders and more than 90 per cent believed a takeover bid would eventually succeed.

The survey by Execution, an independent stockbroker, anonymously polled S&N, Carlsberg and Heineken shareholders. Execution estimated that the 34 S&N shareholders who replied accounted for about 15 to 20 per cent of the share capital.

Of those, 60 per cent said the board should engage with the consortium and 56 per cent said they would accept the offer if it were raised to 775p, from 750p today.

The findings could put pressure on the Scottish brewer to engage with Carlsberg and Heineken, who first approached the company with an offer of 720p in October, but it was swiftly rejected. The pair last month raised their offer to 750p a share but again S&N refused to talk.

The Execution report said: "On the evidence of this survey S&N's management is walking a fine line between obtaining the best price possible and losing support of its shareholders. The consortium must be aware that a relatively modest increase in its proposed offer would ratchet up the pressure on S&N's management to an extent that they would find difficult to resist."

It is understood that the consortium has all but ruled out launching a hostile bid by taking the offer directly to shareholders. Sources close to the consortium have said they are also unwilling to contemplate raising their offer until S&N at least agrees to enter into a dialogue with the bidding group.

One source said today: "The real issue is we need to get in there and do our due diligence to confirm our assumptions. We have not seen anything to suggest we are in a position to pay a higher price."

The source said the report confirmed the consortium's own conversations with shareholders, the majority of which have expressed an "overwhelming" desire for S&N to talk to its suitors.

S&N has consistently said the pair's bid undervalues the company and that Carlsberg is simply trying to buy Baltic Beverages Holding, the Russian brewer it jointly owns with S&N, on the cheap. John Dunsmore, the new S&N chief executive, has outlined a robust defence strategy focusing heavily on the opportunities for greater efficiencies and cost cutting within the existing business. Last week, he is understood to have scrapped the group's director functions for technology, marketing and sales set up by his predecessor, Tony Froggatt.

A source familiar with S&N's thinking said today that it was getting to the point where the company was considering issuing a "put up or shut up" to force the consortium to put a bid on the table or walk away, although another said this would not happen until the new year.

A spokesman for S&N said: "We're confident shareholders understand our position."

Meanwhile S&N is looking to start its first brewery in Vietnam with a $75 million (£36.4 million) investment. The plant, to be located near Ho Chi Minh City in the south, would have an annual output of 75 million litres of Kronenbourg beer in the first phase. The brewer plans to import Kronenbourg to Vietnam until the plant has started production.

Execution was set up in 2001 by Deusche Bank's former global head of sales trading, Nick Finegold. The broker conducted similar studies during the bid battle for ABN Amro and Akzo Nobel's takeover of ICI Group.

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive