Last week TheShout reported that Carlsberg’s chairman Flemming Besenbacher ruled out bidding for the brands and Asahi is now widely tipped to be the first company to make a bid.
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If accepted, it would be the biggest overseas beverage acquisition ever by a Japanese company, topping Kirin Holdings Co Ltd’s 2503.T $3.3 billion takeover of Australia’s Lion Nathan in 2009, the paper said.
The brands being considered for sale include Peroni and Grolsch and their businesses in Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, as well as SAB’s Meantime craft brewery in Greenwich, London.
Anheuser Busch InBev SA has been seeking potential buyers for Grolsch and Peroni in order to get European regulatory approval for its proposed acquisition of arch rival SABMiller for around $104 billion.
AB InBev’s decision to sell the two premium beers was made in order to pre-empt antitrust action regarding concerns that the new combined company will not have too much dominance over the European market.
Together, AB InBev and SABMiller will account for one in every three beers produced and sold across the world and result in ownership of several top-performing brands across the globe.
With the sale of these beer brands, AB InBev believes that it would be able to achieve the nod from regulators in Brussels, which has the authority to block the deal on grounds of competition concerns.
Bids for Peroni and Grolsch are expected as early as this week, the report said.
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Until now, Asahi’s worldwide operations were confined to Oceania and Asia. Tokyo-based Asahi’s beer unit is targeting to sell 161.5 million cases of beer and beer-like drinks in 2016, a 0.4 percent rise from previous year, it announced January 6.
