LONDON (Reuters) - Dutch brewer Heineken <HEIN.AS> on Tuesday said the head of its British business Jeremy Blood is stepping down as managing director of Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) UK and will leave the group immediately for personal reasons.
Blood was appointed as head of S&N UK in December 2007 and then re-confirmed in the post when Heineken took over S&N's UK business in April 2008 in a deal whereby Heineken and Carlsberg split up the British brewer of Fosters and Kronenbourg beers.
Heineken has come under pressure after the purchase due the sharp decline in the British beer market, and Blood was one of only a few former S&N senior managers to keep their jobs under the new Heineken regime.
The Dutch brewer said in a statement that a successor to Blood will be announced shortly and in the interim the existing management will run the business on a day-to-day basis reporting directly to Heineken's head of Western Europe Didier Debrosse.
(Reporting by David Jones; Editing by Hans Peters)