Deal of the century: Asahi offers  £2.05bn (€ 2.6bn) for AB InBev brands

Anheuser-Busch InBev, the industry leader, with beer brands Peroni and Grolsch received a unbelievable offer from Japan’s biggest brewer and maker of consumer goods from beer to baby products, Asahi group, to revive its beer sales. In the brewers market competition is intense, the top five account for 9/10^th of the market, The sale of European brands which belong to SAB Miller, is  aimed at easing European regulatory concerns. The Asahi offer looks to close its £70bn takeover of SAE Miller.

Only recently Japan Tobacco’s $5bn purchase of cigarette assets from Reynolds and Nikkei’s $1.3bnacquisition of Financial Times from Pearson.

Asahi outbid rivals including Thai Beverage maker of Chang Beer and several private equity buyers and if the deal is completed it would be the biggest acquisition and the largest Japanese deal in the beverage industry since Suntory’s $16bn takeover of US Spirit make beam in 2014.

The deal however, is conditional on the completion of AB InBev’s deal for SAB Miller. Asahi would finance the entire deal with bank loans, as its value of assets at about 14 times, earnings before interest, taxation depreciation and amortisation.