DB leaving board after 70 years

By IRENE CHAPPLE

This week, after more than 70 years as a public company, DB Breweries will kiss goodbye to the New Zealand Stock exchange.

Parent company Asia Pacific Breweries has succeeded in its takeover bid and has just 1.92 per cent left to mop up.

The offer closes today and the company will delist within days.

Asia Pacific Breweries reached the 90 per cent ownership level, which clears the way for compulsory acquisition of remaining shares, last month.

The deal will cost the Singapore-based company $110 million for the 23.09 per cent of DB it did not already own.

DB, one of the country's oldest listed companies, was valued at $479 million in the $9.50 a share takeover.

The brewer's story began in 1929 when William Coutts and his three sons established Otahuhu's Waitemata Brewery.

Coutts later merged his business with that of Henry Kelliher, the owner of Auckland wholesale beer distributor Levers & Co.

In 1930 a prospectus was issued offering £75,000 worth of shares in Dominion Breweries.

This week's full takeover will close a intriguing chapter in the company's public history which began when Asia Pacific Breweries bought into DB Breweries from Brierleys in the early 1990s.

Asia Pacific Breweries bid for control in 2000, and paid $2.80 a share to raise its stake from 58 per cent to almost 77 per cent.