Charities get pounds 34m Sainsbury shares: Industry minister makes transfer of family business stock to trusts

TIM Sainsbury, the industry minister and Britain's 70th richest individual, transferred pounds 33.5m of shares in the family business - the J Sainsbury supermarket group - to charitable trusts yesterday.

The transfer to trusts of which he is not a trustee leaves him with a personal interest in 49.5 million shares, which are worth pounds 207m at yesterday's 419p closing price.

That leaves him well short of the pounds 1.3bn wealth of his cousin David Sainsbury, the chairman and chief executive of the supermarket chain.

Tim Sainsbury, the youngest son of Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover, the previous chairman, is thought to be a generous philanthropist through his Headley Trust, encouraged by his wife Susan, a committed Christian.

The announcement said Mr Sainsbury transferred the shares to JS Portrait, who is the Sainsbury family solicitor, 'for no consideration'.

Mr Sainsbury, who is on the left of the Conservative Party, severed his boardroom connections with J Sainsbury in 1983 when he joined the Government. He has been MP for Hove since 1973.

Before then he worked in the family business, managing the widespread property interests.

A spokesman for Mr Sainsbury at the Department of Trade and Industry said: 'He's not commenting and it's a private matter.'

Sainsbury and other grocery shares have been badly hit in recent months by fears of price-cutting and the imminent arrival of warehouse clubs from the US.

In March Mr Sainsbury described a report from the Labour Research Department that he was worth pounds 160m as having 'no semblance to reality'. He went on: 'Their figures are wrong. I have never seen one that is right.'

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