Musgrave's £40 million sterling (€57 million) offer for the Londis symbol group in Britain was accepted by almost all of the Londis shareholders who had voted before it was withdrawn last Friday.

Musgrave took its offer for the company off the table when the Londis board said it was no longer recommending it. The move followed the emergence of a rival approach from the Big Food Group.

Almost one-third of Londis's 1,933 shareholders had voted on the Musgrave bid before it was withdrawn. Of these, the overwhelming majority had elected to accept the offer, which would have given them a return of about £10,000.

The Big Food Group had offered to double this.

The voting results, which are now effectively meaningless, surfaced as a group of dissident Londis shareholders threatened to disrupt the company's annual meeting on December 30th if its non-executive directors did not resign immediately.

The shareholders are disgruntled at the level of award that would be due to the company's executive directors in the event of a takeover.

Mr Adrian Costain, deputy chairman of the Londis shareholder action group, said the body would "filibuster every motion" at the meeting.

The action group believes the non-executive directors let shareholders down by allowing the four executive directors of the co-operative retailer to renew a seven-year option last December that gives them 51 per cent of proceeds of any successful takeover.

Mr Costain, who has been nominated by the group to replace Mr Peter White as chairman of Londis, said he enjoyed the support of at least 30 per cent of the shareholders.  - (Additional reporting, Financial Times Service)