InBev offers new asset sales to aid merger

LONDON — Anheuser-Busch InBev said Friday it had offered to sell the Central and Eastern European operations of SABMiller in order to win approval from European regulators for their more than $100 billion merger.

The combination of SAB-Miller and Anheuser-Busch would create a beer industry giant that would account for about 30 percent of global beer sales.

Anheuser-Busch has entered into a number of agreements to sell a variety of assets from the combined company as it seeks to ease regulatory concerns about the deal.

This month, it accepted an offer by Asahi Group Holdings of Japan to buy the beer brands Grolsch, Meantime and Peroni, as well as some of SABMiller’s European operations, for $2.9 billion.

On Friday, AnheuserBusch said it had offered to sell SABMiller’s assets in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia as part of a package of divestments as it seeks approval from the European Commission. Anheuser-Busch hopes to close the deal for SABMiller in the second half of this year.

“SABMiller’s Central and Eastern European businesses have been a core part of our growth story since we first embarked on our international expansion strategy over 20 years ago,” Alan Clark, SAB-Miller’s chief executive, said in a news release.

“We are very proud of these businesses, their brands and the people that have made them the successes they are today, and we will continue to grow and support them throughout this process,” he said.

In November, Anheuser-Busch agreed to sell SABMill-er’s 59 percent stake in Miller-Coors in the United States to SABMiller’s partner in a joint venture, Molson Coors Brewing, for about $12 billion.

That deal includes the global rights to the Miller brand and would make Molson Coors the second-largest brewer in the United States, behind Anheuser-Busch.

The divestments are all contingent on the Anheuser-Busch-SABMiller merger closing.