Scottish & Newcastle, the owner of Foster’s beer and Newcastle Brown Ale, on Thursday neared the end of a three-month takeover battle as it opened talks with Carlsberg and Heineken at 800p per share, paving the way for Heineken to become Britain’s largest brewer. Carlsberg and Heineken initially approached S&N in mid-October with an informal offer of 720p a share, more recently raised to 780p. The UK Takeover Panel said it had agreed to a request by the brewers to a short extension to the “put-up or shut- up” deadline on Monday to allow the consortium to do some due diligence. Carlsberg will fund all of the additional 20p or £18.9m in the raised bid following the consortium’s most recent offer of 780p last week. Its shares fell 4.7% in Copenhagen on the news, but analysts said this was due to the increased likelihood of a diluting share issue, rather than fears the brewer was overpaying for S&N. Read more FT analysis on the battle for UK’s last big brewer.

This entry was posted by Gwen Robinson on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 5:46 and is filed under Capital markets, M&A. Tagged with Carlsberg, heineken, scottish & newcastle. Edit this entry.