Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, the world’s largest brewer, yesterday launched an improved offer for SABMiller PLC, offering just over £68 billion (US$104 billion) for its largest rival to extend its reach into Africa and other markets.
The company said in a statement it was offering £42.15 per SABMiller share, having already made two prior offers at £38 and £40.
AB InBev said it believed the offer would be attractive to SABMiller shareholders, adding it was disappointed the UK-based company’s board had rejected both previous approaches.
The company also added an alternative to the cash offer of partial payment in shares, although AB InBev said it would limit this to 41 percent of SABMiller stock and is primarily designed to suit the UK brewer’s major shareholders Altria and the Santo Domingo family.
Under this offer shareholders would get £2.37 per share in cash plus £0.48 special unlisted AB InBev shares, which are convertible into ordinary AB InBev stock after a five-year lock-up period.
AB InBev said it expected most SABMiller shareholders would accept the all-cash offer and could reinvest their proceeds in its listed ordinary shares.
Top shareholder Altria, the tobacco group that has 26.56 percent of SABMiller, said it supported the bid and would be prepared to opt for the share alternative.
AB InBev chief executive Carlos Brito told a conference call that he also expected support from the Santo Domingo family, which holds a 13.9 percent stake through their company BevCo, according to Thomson Reuters data.
The merged group would be a brewing colossus making nearly a third of all beer consumed worldwide.
It would add Africa and certain Latin American and Asian breweries to AB InBev’s extensive presence across the Americas and add SABMiller’s Peroni, Grolsch, Pilsner Urquell and other international brands to AB InBev’s existing line-up, which includes Budweiser, Stella Artois and Corona.
Analysts see this merger as the end-game of consolidation in brewing with the big four — AB InBev, SABMiller, Heineken NV and Carlsberg A/S — already present across the globe and brewing more than half of the world’s beer.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”