Dive Brief:
- SABMiller says it will sell its 39.6% stake in African hotel and casino operator Tsogo Sun for roughly $1 billion.
- The maker of Miller, Peroni, Grolsch, and other beers said it will reinvest the proceeds from the sale in beer operations in Africa, which is SABMiller's second-largest market, trailing only Latin America as a source of revenue.
- Tsogo,a publicly traded company based in South Africa, operates more than 90 luxury hotels across the African continent.
Dive Insight:
The plan to sell its stake in Tsogo would seem to spell the end of an era for SABMiller.
The company is now the second-largest brewer on earth following a series of mergers and acquisitions that stretch back for several years. But SABMiller got its start selling beer to South African miners, and later expanded into other segments of the South African economy. Selling Tsogo will make SABMiller a bigger player in beer sales in Africa, but it will make it far less of a player in South Africa itself.
