Thai brewer set for big Singapore float

SINGAPORE - Thai Beverage, the country's largest brewer, plans a US$1 billion ($1.63 billion) initial share sale in Singapore after anti-alcohol protesters blocked an offering in Thailand, three bankers involved in the sale said.

Thai Beverage, owned by Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, Thailand's richest person, is set to begin marketing its IPO to international investors in May, the bankers said, asking not to be identified because an announcement hasn't been made. The maker of Chang beer and Mekhong whiskey plans to raise between US$900 million and US$1 billion, the bankers said.

Drawing more foreign share sales is crucial to Singapore's effort to remain a major financial centre in Asia as competition increases from Shanghai to Mumbai.

Thai Beverage's offering may be the biggest IPO in the Southeast Asian nation since Singapore Telecommunications' initial share sale in 1993, the city-state's largest.

"For Singapore, it bodes well for its efforts to be a hub for Southeast Asia, offering companies international investors they can tap," said Nicholas Yeo, a fund manager at Aberdeen Asset Management in Singapore, which manages US$15 billion in assets.

Companies raised about US$1.5 billion through IPOs in Singapore last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Financial services make up more than one-tenth of Singapore's US$119 billion economy, with its market of 4 million people offering limited share sales from local companies. A total of 213 overseas companies are traded in Singapore, with a combined market capitalisation of S$113.5 billion ($114 billion) or about a quarter of the value of shares traded on the city-state's exchange.

Thai Beverage is choosing Singapore after anti-alcohol and religious groups forced regulators to indefinitely delay its request to list in Thailand. Thai Beverage is the holding company for the alcohol business of Charoen, 61, whose US$3.2 billion fortune makes him Thailand's richest person, according to Forbes magazine.

Thai Beverage earlier hired JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, SCB Securities, and a unit of Deutsche Bank to help sell the shares.

The initial public offering may attract investors seeking access to Southeast Asia's second-largest economy, where the biggest IPO to date is a 32.5 billion baht ($1.36 billion) share sale by Thai Oil in October 2004.

Thailand's biggest initial public offerings have faced roadblocks in recent months. A Thai court on March 23 ruled that Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand's plan to raise 34.86 billion baht in an initial share sale was illegal, threatening Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's plans to sell other state assets. The IPO would have been the biggest in Thailand.

Protesters trying to oust Thaksin oppose his plan to sell Government assets after his family made a tax-free US$1.9 billion gain from selling a stake in Shin Corp, a company he founded, to Singapore's Temasek Holdings.

"With all the issues going on in Singapore and Thailand, there will be some negative political noise but at the end of the day, investors will be more concerned about how good the company is," Yeo said.

Thai Beverage wants to raise money to pay debt and expand abroad as competitors such as San Miguel, the biggest Philippine brewer, enter the Thai market.

Thai Beverage posted a profit of 10.41 billion baht last year, little changed from a year earlier, it said on March 27.

The company, with sales of 960 million litres of beer in 2005, controls about 60 per cent of the country's total beer market.

- BLOOMBERG