F&N/APB/Thai Bev

F&N/APB/Thai Bev: The APB Saga is far from over. Kindest Place has offered $55 / share for F&N’s direct stakes in APB (7.26%, valued at $1b) 10% higher than the offer by Heineken. Heineken, which holds 42% of APB, had earlier offered to buy out the 40% stake of F&N (indirect stakes via Asia Pacific Investment) for $50 / share in a deal worth $5.1b. Charoen's Thai Beverage already owns around 24% of F&N, while Kindest Place holds 8.6% of APB. The offer will lapse at the close of business on Aug 16 andthe F&N board which had earlier accepted Heineken's offer subject to shareholders' approval will evaluate the higher offer. Nomura see a risk of Heineken having to increase its overall offer for APB shares to at least $55/share to match Thai Bev’s offer and estimate that the $50/bid valued the remaining shares of APB at EUR b, implying an EBITDA multiple of 19x. In addition, a higher bid at $55/share would push up Heineken pro-forma leverage from 2.8xnet debt/ebitda based on the SGD 50/share bid to nearer 3x. For the Heineken bid, the approval from F&N shareholders only requires a 50% majority, which would imply that Thai Bev cannot solely block the Heineken bid. IG Markets note that this will start a bidding war where the board of F&N will now have to go to the shareholders with the fact that they've had a higher offer. Add that to see Heineken, come in from Europe and try and take over this prized Asian asset, the ball was always in the court of (the Thai firm) to come in with something. Now, all the pressure will be on Heineken, who thought they'd won the day, to see if they can better the offer. Figures from global business consultancy Euromonitor showed that the Asia-Pacific region is the world's biggest beer market with 35.3% of the total vol consumed globally last year, up from 34.4% in 2010.