As SABMiller is now headquartered in London, U.K., rules require InBev to make an offer for Miller by October 14 or drop it.
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Beer companies like these may be consolidating as beer consumption in emerging markets like Brazil and China have been going down, Robobank worldwide analyst Ross Colbert stated, according to Bloomberg.
The merged company would produce 1/3 of the world’s beer, according to reports.
Shares are up around 23% on the news.
Anheuser-Busch has reportedly approached SABMiller about a takeover, but will the beer maker take the bait? The company provides hotel and gaming services and operates as a finance and agent company. AB InBev then confirmed the approach and said it wanted to work with SABMiller on a deal, rather than pursuing a hostile takeover.
“No proposal has yet been received and the board of SABMiller has no further details about the terms of any such proposal”, SABMiller said in a statement.
“The real attraction is Africa, where AB InBev has no presence, as well as some add-ons in Asia and Latin America”, said Societe Generale beverage analyst Andrew Holland. DOJ spokesman Peter Carr and EC spokesman Ricardo Cardoso declined to comment.
Jorge Paulo Lemann, the Brazilian financier who recently engineered the merger of the USA food giants Heinz and Kraft with the veteran American investor Warren Buffett, was the driving force behind the the creation of the world’s biggest brewer, AB Inbev – and behind much of the consolidation of the industry in the past 10 years.
Even the smaller SAB is a product of a series of deals, starting with the combination that gave the company its name, a 2002 deal to merge South African Breweries and Miller Brewing. Between these two, they own Peroni, Grolsch, Budweiser, Becks, Coors Light, and a whole load of other lagers that you might refer to as “piss”.
London-based SABMiller is one of the top five global brewing companies, making more than 200 beers including Miller Lite and and Pilsner Urquell.
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Headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, AB InBev was formed by the 2008 purchase of United States brewer Anheuser-Busch by InBev, itself formed by a 2004 merger between Belgium’s Interbrew and Brazil’s AmBev.
