Heineken’s bid to buy Asia……..Pacific Breweries

You know how Asia has all those burgeoning ecnonomies…well it seems that with the slowly declining sales of major brewers in North America, we are seeing a reversal of the eastern brewers buying out the west (e.g. Sapporo’s 2006 acquisition of Sleeman), as the western brands look to move east for sales.

On Friday Dutch brewer Heineken offered $4.06 billion U.S. dollars for Fraser & Neave’s 40% stake in Singapore based Asia Pacific Breweries – a company whose portfolio already includes brewing rights to Heineken in Asia and New Zealand, as well its flagship Tiger beer. It’s also a company that Heineken currently owns about 42% of – as such, if the transaction goes through, Heiny will own 82%,  and will trigger a required offer to buyout the remaining shareholders.

To put this $10 billion + valuation of APB in perspective, in April, MolsonCoors acquired Europe’s StarBev (brewers of many eastern European brands such Borsodi, Kamenitza, Bergenbier, Ozusko, Jelen and Niksicko and also distributer of brands such as Stella Artois, Beck’s, Hoegaarden, Lowenbrau and Leffe under license) for $3.5 billion.

As another interesting side to this story is that earlier this week ThaiBev, a company owned by Thailand’s richest man, agreed to buy 22% of Fraser & Neave – How do you think they feel about F&N giving up their stake in APB?

Of course, this deal still has nothing on the King of Beer – Inbev’s 2008 $52 billion acquisition of Anheuser-Busch. But after somehow becoming the official beer of the London games, Heineken seems to be aiming for world domination.

Complex stuff, this big beer business.