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Japan: Asahi to buy Peroni, Grolsch brands for more than $3.5 billion

By  |  February 10, 2016

Asahi Group Holdings is in exclusive talks to buy SABMiller’s Peroni, Grolsch and Meantime beer brands for $2.87 billion, it said on Wednesday, as the Japanese company aims to offset slow growth at home.

The sale of the European brands is being orchestrated by Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI.BR), which is trying to secure antitrust approval for its $100 billion-plus takeover of SABMiller, agreed last year.

Asahi is Japan’s biggest brewer with 38 percent of its home market, where a shrinking population and the increasing popularity of wine have weighed on beer sales over the past two decades.

With Peroni, Grolsch and Meantime, Asahi would get sizeable footholds in the premium beer segments of Italy, Britain and the Netherlands, and new distribution opportunities for its namesake Asahi Super Dry beer.

Asahi said it was buying the overseas businesses for growth, while its home market will remain its profit mainstay.

Full content: Fortune

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