Cheers! Asahi’s CUB buy approved

FIRB has approved Japan’s Asahi Beverages’ $16bn acquisition of Australia’s biggest brewer, Carlton & United Breweries.

The Foreign Investment Review Board has approved Japan’s Asahi Beverages’ $16bn acquisition of Australia’s biggest brewer, Carlton & United Breweries, owner of some of the most popular brands in the country.

This approval marks the conclusion of the regulatory review process and the meeting of all regulatory conditions to closing the transaction, but Asahi will need to divest two of CUB’s beer brands and three of its cider brands to appease competition concerns of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission.

Asahi Beverages chairman Peter Margin said both parties “will move to complete this acquisition on June 1, with CUB joining the Asahi Beverages family on that day”.

CUB will become a business division of the Asahi Beverages Regional Hub within Oceania, along with Asahi Lifestyle Beverages, Asahi Premium Beverages and Asahi Beverages New Zealand.

The FIRB approval will mean that Australia’s two leading brewers, CUB and Lion, are owned by Japanese conglomerates, with Kirin owning Lion.

The nation’s brewing industry was lined up for its biggest shake-up in decades after Japan’s Asahi clinched a deal with Anheuser-Busch InBev to buy CUB for $16bn last year, in one of the biggest takeovers in Australian corporate history.

CUB, based in Melbourne with a history stretching back to 1903, was owned by Foster’s until 2011, when it was sold to SABMiller for $11bn. Later, it was folded into a $US100bn mega-merger with Anheuser-Busch InBev to create the biggest brewer in the world.

The deal leaves South Australia’s Coopers as the largest Australian-owned brewery.