PUBS and beer group Scottish & Newcastle has sold nearly 700 outlets in two deals worth £360m.

Pub operator Enterprise Inns has paid £263.6m for 432 outlets, while Noble House Leisure has secured 214 pubs for £97.1m.

The venues are throughout England and Scotland.

The deals are part of a four-year restructuring programme announced by S&N in January, to sell off smaller venues and refocus on brewing.

The new deals leave S&N, which owns the Newcastle Brown and John Smith's brands, with 1,450 large managed outlets.

The group, which is based in Edinburgh, still wants to sell another 94 pubs - chairman Brian Stewart said this would be done "in the near future".

He added: "These disposals will leave us with a business of high quality assets, with sharper focus and clear opportunities for growth."

Pub operator Enterprise, which is based in Solihull, West Midlands, is buying the S&N outlets as part of an aggressive acquisition programme.

Over the last five years, Enterprise has upped the number of pubs it owns from just under 500 to over 3,000.

The S&N pubs is its second major deal in as many months - in May, it spent £262.5m buying 439 former Whitbread sites.

Chairman Hubert Reid said: "This latest acquisition further increases the scale, quality and diversity of the Enterprise estate."

It is financing the purchase partly through a rights issue, which is expected to raise £66m.

The group said it had no intention of slowing down the acquisition hunt, adding there was still "considerable scope" for more deals.

As well as S&N, Enterprise also announced an agreement to buy 59 pubs from Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries, at a cost of £28m, should a hostile takeover bid by Pubmaster be successful.