Budweiser and Stella Artois-owner AB InBev said the deal, which mainly concerns businesses in the UK, Italy and the Netherlands, was conditional on its £71bn takeover of SABMiller going ahead.
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Asahi, which made its binding cash offer for the brands in February, is hoping to significantly widen its global footprint in taking advantage of AB InBev’s need to sell European assets to secure European regulatory approval for the SABMiller acquisition.
If the sale of Peroni, Grolsch and Meantime goes through, it would be the biggest-ever overseas acquisition by a Japanese beer company.
Buying Peroni and Grolsch would allow Asahi to tap into growth outside a declining Japanese lager market, where it has a 38% share. “This should allow Asahi to distribute its brands through those networks, and I assume they will take the European brands into the home market too, at a premium no doubt”.
Asahi closed 2 per cent higher at 3,556 yen by the close of trading in Tokyo, before AB Inbev’s acceptance of the deal was announced.
In November, AB InBev announced it would acquire SABMiller for $108 billion, creating a brewing behemoth controlling approximately 30 percent of the world’s beer market.
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“The concern is how Asahi will do in Europe, as they have no experience there and beer history is much deeper there than in Asia”, said Masashi Mori, a Tokyo-based analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG. It’s also sold SAB’s 49 per cent stake in China’s top brewer Snow beer to local partner China Resources Beer (Holdings) Co for $1.6 billion to satisfy regulators.
