SAB Miller is facing a battle to buy one of Brazil’s top brewers. The FTSE 100 maker of Peroni and Grolsch lagers is considering a bid for Schincariol, Brazil’s second-largest brewer. The privately owned firm has been put up for sale for about $2 billion (£1.25 billion).
However, SAB is likely to face stiff competition from its Dutch rival Heineken, which is also keen to expand in a region where the population’s thirst for beer is growing rapidly. Schincariol produces about 2.5 billion litres of beer a year.
Deal nears for printer
Polestar, the magazine printer once owned by Robert Maxwell, the disgraced Daily Mirror tycoon, is close to getting wealthy new backers.
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The company, which prints 42m magazines a week, including the Radio Times, is in talks about being bought by Sun Capital, the American private equity giant.
Polestar management have been answerable to their lenders since 2007, when banks took control in return for cancelling £700m of debt.
Carlyle puts on make-up
Carlyle, the US investment giant, is to back the buyout of a company specialising in the supply of cosmetics and toiletries to top European hotel groups such as Swissôtel and Relais & Châteaux.
The firm is expected to announce the purchase this week of Germany’s ADA Cosmetics from rival Halder Private Equity.
Based in Kehl, Germany, ADA supplies more than 15,000 hotels and generated sales last year of €43m (£38m).
Kelly heads spin-off hunt
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The software tycoon Stephen Kelly has been appointed to head the search for entrepreneurial ideas that can be spun out of central government into mutually owned start-ups.
The former boss of Micro Focus has been appointed as the crown commercial representative to make sure the mutuals attract the right private-sector partners and funding.
There are already 21 projects under way.
Madoff ‘soulmate’ hits out
The Austrian grandmother accused of being a “criminal soulmate” of Bernard Madoff claims HSBC should have warned her he was a fraud. In an interview with Swiss weekly Das Magazin, Sonja Kohn said she “did not have the slightest suspicion” he was running a multi-billion pound fraud. “There were neither red flags nor warning signs,” she said. “We received on an ongoing basis reports from HSBC. The financial statements have been created by Ernst & Young, one of the large auditors. There was no reason to doubt the information of these reputable financial service providers.”
Irving Picard, the trustee winding up the Madoff scheme, has accused Kohn of taking kickbacks from Madoff in exchange for bringing in new funds. “There were neither secret kickbacks nor any other transactions that were not completely normal,” Kohn said.
Daily Sport publisher goes to the wall
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0.88:The price, in pence, at which shares in Sport Media Group, publisher of the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport, were suspended on Friday after it appointed administrators.
800: The number of copies, in thousands, the Sunday Sport, famous for its outlandish stories, sold in its heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s.