Greene King has announced plans to enter up to 35 per cent of its pubs into a property joint venture and to return at least £100m to shareholders.

The pub operator and brewer said that it would be set up an OpCo/PropCo structure for 872 pubs outside its existing securitisation arrangement.

The news came at the same time as the Suffolk-based company released its full year results, which saw pretax profit before exceptional items at £139.8m, an increase of 17 per cent on last year.

Chief executive Rooney Anand said: “These results are another step in over four decades of uninterrupted profit growth. Our experience across the whole of the Scottish pub and beer industry has stood us in good stead for the English smoking ban.

We are well prepared and in a good position to grasp the opportunities afforded by the “ban by broadening the appeal of our pubs.

“We are also planning to release significant additional funds from further increasing the efficiency of our balance sheet, and to unlock substantial extra value from our property estate.”