Philippine conglomerate San Miguel Corp. is interested in acquiring European beer brands Peroni and Grolsch owned by SABMiller Plc. of the United Kingdom.
“Yes we will join,” San Miguel president and chief operating officer Ramon Ang said in a text message, when asked if San Miguel would join the bidding for the well-known beer brands, which were being sold to obtain regulatory approval for the merger of Anheuser-Busch InBev NV and SABMiller Plc.
San Miguel, the largest beer manufacturer in the Philippines, will join other big beer and beverage companies in Asia that are also interested in the two brands.
Anheuser Busch InBev SA, the world’s largest brewer, earlier offered to buy SABMiller for 71 billion pounds or $100 billion.
Reports said aside from San Miguel, other Asian companies planning to submit bids of more than $3 billion to acquire the two beer brands included Asahi Group Holdings Ltd. of Japan and Thai Beverage PCL of Thailand.
San Miguel, through unit San Miguel Brewery Inc., sells nine of 10 beers in the Philippines.
The conglomerate, which started as a beer company 125 years ago, has diversified into various growth industries including infrastructure, power generation, mining, oil manufacturing, real estate, banking and telecommunications.
Several Philippine companies made significant overseas acquisition in 2015 to boost their businesses.
Among them are Universal Robina Corp., which acquired New Zealand’s snack food business Griffin for $576 million; Monde Nissin which bought UK-based Quorn Foods for $835.6 million; Emperador Inc. which purchased Spanish brandy Fundador and three other liquor brands from Beam Suntory for P13.8 billion; and Jollibee Foods Corp., which acquired a 40-percent stake in US-based burger chain Smashburger for $99.47 million.
First Metro Investments Corp. executive vice president Justino Juan Ocampo said he expected more Filipino companies to make cross-border acquisitions, given the healthy balance sheets of local companies and access to domestic acquisition financing.
Share price of San Miguel surged 15.4 percent to P60 on Wednesday.