South Africans have expressed concern about local jobs once breweries AB InBev and SABMiller merge. SABMiller’s 4th investor, PIC (a South African investment fund), held talks with Carlos Brito, AB InBev CEO, last week.
PIC, (Public Investment Corp), owns 3.4% of SABMiller. The fund initially opposed the first buyout offer made by AB InBev on its competitor. “This would lead to a sort of monopoly, with dangerous consequences for the world economy and for the beer market,” they said at the time.
Now that the 2 parties have agreed to merge at a cost of almost 106 million dollars, PIC is requesting that a new entity be publicly traded in Johannesburg, and that local jobs be guaranteed, revealed a PIC spokesperson to Bloomberg press agency. He also thinks that AB InBev should support secondary activities linked to the breweries, such as agriculture.
(Source: Belga)
