Miller Group chief executive Keith Miller last night said "everybody's a winner" from a deal that sees Bank of Scotland replace disgruntled family shareholders as investors in the property company.

Neither side has revealed the terms of the deal, which comes just days before the company is expected to reveal its first drop in profits in 13 years on Wednesday.

But it will see a substantial dilution of the family's 89% holding in the company as Bank of Scotland takes a minority stake. The remaining 11% is held by management and an employee benefits trust.

A group of extended Miller family members, who styled themselves the Aligned Shareholder Group and accounted for some 60% of shares, last year said they wanted to approach buyers for their stake.

The arrangement with Bank of Scotland is part of a deal brokered between the two wings of the family in February that also saw the company set up a family council to provide shareholders with a voice.

Miller told The Herald: "It resolves all the difficulties we had last year with some of the family shareholders and we now have a stable family shareholding business going forward and a supportive institutional shareholder in the form of Bank of Scotland."

Miller claimed that both shareholders who had sold out and those who remained were happy with the deal added: "It is also a natural progression of the company as we continue our growth plans"

Miller Group has claims to be the UK's largest privately- owned housebuilding property development and construction business.

The announcement comes only days before it releases its financial results for 2007 on April 9 which will see it reveal a fall in pre-tax profits from last year's record of £81.7m. This would end a sequence of 13 years of profits growth.

The deal also signals that Bank of Scotland parent HBOS is prepared to ignore the concerns of analysts that it has defied analysts worried about its exposure to the property market particularly at a time when there are concerns about a slump in the price of both residential and commercial property.

Peter Cummings, chief executive of Bank of Scotland Corporate, which has around £40bn in property and construction loans, said: "Bank of Scotland are a through the cycle lender and investor."

Meanwhile, there has been a management buy-out for Palmer & Harvey, the UK's fourth-largest privately-owned company. Barclays and Bank of Ireland's asset-backed lending arm Burdale arranged £447m of finance for the purchase of the company which has a turnover of $4bn (£2bn) from supplying food, confectionery and tobacco to retailers.