The boss of Anheuser-Busch InBev has stepped up his assault on the board of rival brewer SABMiller for refusing to discuss his company’s £65bn takeover approach for the maker of Grolsch and Peroni.
Carlos Brito, chief executive of Belgian-based AB InBev, issued a statement to the stock market in which he called on SABMiller shareholders to voice their views to the board and urge engagement in talks to create a brewer that would produce a third of the world’s beer.
AB InBev, which owns Budweiser and Stella Artois, also offered to share details of its work on assuaging regulatory concerns in China and the US – a topic of concern for SABMiller. AB InBev said it would “work proactively with regulators to resolve any concerns”.
Brito said: “Notwithstanding our good faith efforts, the board of SABMiller has refused to meaningfully engage with us. Our proposal creates significant value for everybody. How long will it be before shareholders see a value of over £42 [a share] in the absence of an offer from AB InBev?
“If shareholders agree that we should be in proper discussions, they should voice their views and should not allow the board of SABMiller to frustrate this process and let this opportunity slip away.”
AB InBev went public with its £42.15 a share cash offer for SABMiller, which also makes Coors, on Wednesday after being rebuffed twice behind the scenes. Brito had said on Wednesday that SABMiller investors should call the chairman to force him to discuss the terms.
Brito is also facing the problem that SABMiller’s two major shareholders – Altria of the US and BevCo, owned by Colombia’s Santo Domingo family – appear to be split over AB InBev’s approach. Altria has publicly supported the proposal but BevCo has not.
AB InBev seized on the support of the former, which owns 27% of SABMiller and has three representatives on the board, in Thursday’s stock market announcement. Altria, it said, “has publicly stated that it supports our proposal and ‘urges SABMiller’s board to engage promptly and constructively with AB InBev to agree on the terms of a recommended offer’”.
A spokesperson for SABMiller said: “We’ve noted their announcement, it contains nothing new, there’s nothing to respond to.”
James Edwardes Jones, analyst, RBC Capital Markets, said the two companies were not as far apart as their comments suggested. “SABMiller’s apparent intransigence has to be tempered, in our view, both by its largest shareholder’s public support for ABI’s proposal and the fate of those companies’ share prices where a deal has been aborted recently,” he said, pointing to the falls in the share prices of pharmaceuticals company Shire and insurer RSA when takeover approaches for them collapsed.
Under takeover rules AB InBev has until 14 October to make a formal offer to shareholders or walk away for six months.
