Dive Brief:
- KKR and Rhone Capital have raised their offer to buy Australia's Treasury Wine Estates company to $3.2 billion — an 11% increase from an earlier bid that Treasury rejected.
- Treasury, which exports 80 brands including Penfolds, Grange, and Beringer around the globe, responded favorably to the new bid, saying it would open its books to the potential acquirers.
- Treasury has suffered a series of setbacks in recent years, including a substantial drop in U.S. sales and rising competition back home from New Zealand imports.
Dive Insight:
This isn't a done deal. KKR and Rhone now have access to Treasury's books. Presumably they will like what they see and move ahead with their bid, although it's possible that something in the numbers will spook them.
More likely, however, is that Australia itself may object to the deal. We've seen before that the Australian government isn't particularly open to the idea of foreign firms taking control of major Australian companies.
