Asahi Plans Southeast Asia Takeovers, Seeking Wider Margins

Asahi Group Holdings Ltd. and Kirin Holdings Co., Japan’s biggest brewers, plan acquisitions across Southeast Asia to access wider margins in a market of more than half a billion people as demand at home weakens.

“We are looking at Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia,” Asahi President Naoki Izumiya, 63, said in a Dec. 12 interview in Tokyo. Kirin will “consider corporate tie-ups and small-scale mergers and acquisitions in Southeast Asia,” Chief Executive Officer Senji Miyake said in an interview yesterday.