SABMiller

SABMiller is the second largest brewery company in the world by volume, after InBev. The company was formed in 2002 by the merger of South African Breweries and Miller Brewing.

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As brewing is an industry with very large returns to scale, most markets have a profitable dominant brewer, a few marginally profitable secondary brewers, and imports from the dominant brewers in other areas. SABMiller's areas of dominance are Africa, North America and Eastern Europe. However, the company is headquartered in London, England. It is traded on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

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In July 2005, SABMiller announced that it had agreed to acquire Bavaria S.A., a Colombian brewer with a dominant market position in its home country, Peru, Ecuador and Panama. It is the second largest brewer in South America overall with 2004 revenues of over $2 billion. Bavaria was 70% owned by the Santa Domingo family, which will exchange its holding for new shares in SABMiller, giving it a stake of between 15% and 20%, and making it the second largest shareholder. The value of the stake has been reported by the New York Times to be $3.8 billion, though this fluctuates from day to day according to SABMiller's share price. SABMiller will also assume 4.9 billion Colombian pesos (approximately $2.2 billion) of debt.

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InBev: InBev is the largest brewery company in the world by volume, followed by SABMiller and Anheuser-Busch....

South African Breweries: South African Breweries was founded in 1895 by Jacob Letterstedt specifically to serve a new market of miners and prospectors in and around Johannesburg. Two years later, it became the first industrial company to list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). It has been a dominant player on the ex...

Miller Brewing: Miller Brewing is a large American beermaker based in Milwaukee. It was founded in 1855 by Frederic Miller when he purchased the small Plank-Road Brewery. The brewery's location in the Miller Valley provided easy access to raw materials produced on nearby farms. It also has a brewery in Butler Coun...