WEETABIX, the company behind one of Britain’s best-loved breakfast cereals, is in advanced talks to sell two of its American businesses for a total of about $110 million (£60 million), The Times has learnt.

The company is working with NM Rothschild to sell its peripheral Barbara’s Bakery and private label cereal maker businesses to focus on its main Weetabix, Alpen and Ready Brek brands.

Weetabix, which is owned by Lion Capital, the former European division of the private equity firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, is thought to be in discussions with several suitors to sell the units separately.

Ralcorp, the US private food label, is among the remaining bidders for Weetabix’s ownlabel unit, based in Massachusetts. The unit supplies many of America’s biggest grocery stores with products such as toasted oat hoops, wheat squares and organic raisin bran.

Analysts said that food groups such as Kraft Foods, Kellogg’s and General Mills could be interested in the Barbara’s Bakery brand, which makes cereal bars and high-energy granola bars, which incorporate ingredients such as oats, fruit and nuts.

Hicks Muse’s European buyout unit bought Weetabix for £640 million in November 2003, about a year before the unit became independent from Hicks, Muse.

The sale of the Weetabix businesses would represent the first disposals for the independent unit, which became Lion Capital in April.

The unit split from Hicks Muse after the US parent unit incurred several high-profile losses on technology and telecoms investments.

In its first acquisition as Lion Capital, the firm acquired nearly 80 per cent of Wagamama’s, the noodle bar chain, in a deal that valued the chain at £102.5 million.

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