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The joint venture partnership between San Miguel Corp. (SMC) and Kirin Holdings Company, Ltd., the San Miguel Brewery Inc., will acquire the international beer business from SMC.

In its disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, SMB and SMBI has signed a share purchase agreement to acquire San Miguel Brewing International Ltd. (SMBIL), San Miguel’s international beer business subsidiary. The purchase transaction was said to made to the tune of #$300 million, which will be funded by external debt and is expected to be completed sometime by the end of January 2010.

Ramon S. Ang, SMC’s president said, “By integrating both the domestic and international beer business, we can improve the growth and returns of the business as a whole and broaden SMB Inc.’s geographic participation, strengthening our brands and presence in the region.”

SMBI president, Roberto N. Huang, said, “With this acquisition, San Miguel Brewery is expanding its footprint to a bigger and broader platform in Southeast Asia and China, potential access to Kirin’s platform in other developed and emerging markets in Asia.” He added, “Additional brewing facilities overseas will offer greater operating flexibility for SMB’s operations and provide real opportunity for enhancing the already solid performance of our domestic operations.”

SMC will have the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) as its sole financial adviser for the transaction, while ING acted as an independent financial adviser for SMB Inc. SMBI earlier issued P38.8 billion worth of fixed rate bonds to finance its acquisition of the domestic beer brands and brewery land asset from SMC. The fixed rate bonds were issued in three series on April 2009, maturing on 2012, 2014 and 2019 respectively.

Huang said the company hopes to fold in the international beer operations by the end of the year or early 2010, which would allow the company to produce and market San Miguel beer in both the domestic and international markets.