US BREWER Anheuser-Busch accepted a sweetened $52 billion (€32.6 billion) takeover bid from Belgium-based InBev NV to create the world's largest brewer and end a month-long stand-off.

InBev, which makes Stella Artois and Beck's, agreed to pay $70 per share for the maker of Budweiser, up from its original unsolicited bid of $65 per share, both companies said yesterday. The improved offer marked a 27 per cent premium to Anheuser's record-high stock price in October 2002.

The deal, which InBev and analysts expect to gain regulatory approval, would be the largest in the industry and the second-biggest foreign takeover of a US company.

The combined Anheuser-Bush InBev would have some $36.4 billion in annual net sales, some 40 per cent in the United States, and would brew about a quarter of the world's beer.

InBev chief executive Carlos Brito will be chief executive of the new company while Anheuser will get two seats on its board, one of them for current chief executive August Busch IV.

Mr Brito told a conference call that the beauty of the deal lay in acquiring Anheuser's near 50 per cent share of the US market and in taking its Budweiser brand global.

"It's all about complementarity and not overlap," he said.

Anheuser's home town of St Louis, Missouri, will be the headquarters for the North American region. The companies said all of Anheuser's 12 US breweries would remain open.

The deal brings an amicable resolution to a month-long saga that was becoming increasingly hostile as the companies traded lawsuits and InBev set the stage to replace Anheuser's board.

"The synergies are better than expected, $70 is a reasonable price and InBev has avoided a long drawn-out battle in the courts," said KBC Securities analyst Wim Hoste in Brussels.

The companies said the combination would yield cost synergies of at least $1.5 billion annually by 2011, to be phased in equally over three years.

InBev will finance its purchase with $45 billion in debt, including $7 billion bridge financing for divestitures. It will also issue $9.8 billion of new shares.

Chief financial officer Felipe Dutra said a rights issue would be the "natural way" to raise capital.

Morningstar analyst Ann Gilpin said each side would benefit.

"Anheuser-Busch knows the US market a lot better than InBev, so InBev needs to retain key management from Anheuser for marketing and distribution," she said.

To Ms Gilpin, Anheuser shares were only worth $57 on a stand-alone basis, but she said $70 was a fair price since InBev would be able to cut costs and sell Budweiser and Bud Light, the world's two top-selling beers, overseas.

The transaction should have a neutral effect on normalised earnings per share in 2009 and boost earnings from 2010, the companies said. - ( Reuters)