Suzanne Shep­pard

ANSA McAL is mak­ing a bid for full con­trol of Banks Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (BHL) Bar­ba­dos' largest bev­er­age con­glom­er­ate. If suc­cess­ful, the trans­ac­tion will add to the port­fo­lio of Caribbean beer brands held by the T&T-based con­glom­er­ate which cur­rent­ly in­cludes Carib, Stag, Mack­e­son and Red Stripe.

ANSA McAL's un­con­di­tion­al $5.20 per share of­fer to BHL share­hold­ers bet­ters an of­fer of $4 a share from Am­bev, a ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al beer and bev­er­age pro­duc­er head­quar­tered in Brazil with op­er­a­tions across the Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

BHL's di­rec­tors have ad­vised share­hold­ers not to make any de­ci­sions on giv­ing up their stake in the com­pa­ny un­til a val­u­a­tion of the shares is con­duct­ed.Pres­i­dent and CEO of ANSA McAL Bar­ba­dos Nicholas Mout­tet de­scribed the con­glom­er­ate's of­fer, which was made last Mon­day, as "best for Banks, best for Bar­ba­dos."

He said: "The ac­qui­si­tion of the BHL shares will per­mit the con­sol­i­da­tion of com­ple­men­tary busi­ness­es, name­ly the en­ter­pris­es of ANSA McAL, with that of the en­ter­pris­es of BHL and per­mits the ex­e­cu­tion of the very ex­cit­ing busi­ness de­vel­op­ment plans for BHL."

Mout­tet said the his­to­ry and prac­tice at ANSA McAL with ac­qui­si­tions such as Bry­dens and Stags means that at the close of the trans­ac­tion BHL will re­main a stand alone busi­ness with "the Banks name, icon­ic val­ue and head­quar­ters un­changed."A re­lease from ANSA McAL said the glob­al reach of the group is con­tin­u­ing to ex­pand and its part­ner­ship with Heineken pro­vides ac­cess to tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise and a glob­al net­work.

"ANSA McAL in­tends to utilise Bar­ba­dos' lo­ca­tion, qual­i­ty of peo­ple and man­age­ment ex­per­tise to ex­pand the Bar­ba­dos-based pro­duc­tion en­ti­ties in­to re­gion­al cham­pi­ons. The plan is to grow and ac­cel­er­ate the de­vel­op­ment of the man­u­fac­tur­ing plat­form in Bar­ba­dos and en­hance com­pet­i­tive­ness, this sup­port­ing gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy as ar­tic­u­lat­ed in the Na­tion­al Strate­gic Plan 2006-2015."

BHL owns Banks (Bar­ba­dos) Brew­eries Lim­it­ed, Bar­ba­dos Bot­tling Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and Bar­ba­dos Dairy In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed. Its range of bev­er­ages in­cludes lead­ing in­ter­na­tion­al brands pro­duced un­der li­cense such as Co­ca-Co­la, Sprite and Guin­ness and orig­i­nals like Fru­tee, Tiger Malt, Pine­hill juices and milks and Banks Beer.

Am­bev, through its sub­sidiary SLU, re­cent­ly in­creased its stake in BHL to 40 per cent, trig­ger­ing a takeover bid.

Com­ment­ing on the of­fer, Ed­uar­do Lac­er­da, vice-pres­i­dent re­spon­si­ble for Am­bev's Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean op­er­a­tions, said: "We want to ex­pand our op­er­a­tions in the Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean area and we see Banks as a brand and Bar­ba­dos as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­vest­ment.

"We have two ob­jec­tives here: to de­vel­op Banks and to keep Banks as the lo­cal undis­put­ed leader and keep on grow­ing as a hub for ex­ports for the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and even oth­er coun­tries that are close too."