Brasília, March 3, 2004 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - Yesterday (2), the Ambev Company apprised President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of its intention to merge with the Belgian brewery, Interbrew. The merger could give rise to the second largest beer manufacturer in the world. According to the president of Ambev, Victorio Carlos de Marchi, the official announcement of the merger was scheduled to take place today in São Paulo, but the company decided to inform the President first-hand after communicating its decision to the markets.
Marchi guaranteed that the merger will not harm the domestic market. To the contrary. He made a point of emphasizing that Ambev will continue to be "a large Brazilian multinational," only expanding its activities to North America, Europe, and Asia, where Interbrew dominates the market. "What there will be in reality is a complementarity between companies. We informed the President of our intentions, and, from what I could tell, he was pleased," he revealed.
According to Marchi, President Lula's declarations have always been in the sense of encouraging the expansion of Brazilian companies abroad. "In my view he considered the operation extremely important for the country. I accompanied the President in more than one trip abroad, and his declarations were always in the sense that Brazilian companies should be aggressive, should have the ideal of expanding abroad, should not be afraid of expanding abroad," he said.
Ambev intends to inform the Administrative Council of Economic Defense (Cade) of the merger in the next 15 days. Marchi expressed optimism about obtaining approval from the Council for the merger between the Belgian and Brazilian companies. "We shall retain all our positions here, and, with the country's growth, this will doubtlessly generate many jobs," he said.
With regard to the purported leaking of information during the period of negotiations between Ambev and Interbrew, to the benefit of the Brazilian company, Marchi admitted that this might, in fact, have occurred. "Some information really did leak, some of it with a certain basis, the rest naturally using a lot of creativity," he said. Speculations about the leaks led the Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) to begin a process of investigations to discover whether privileged information was used in the negotiations. The CVM decided to conduct an investigation after noting significant gains in the securities of the Brazilian brewery on the São Paulo Stock Exchange.
The Ambev president said, however, that the company complied with all the CVM's demands, passing along all the necessary information about the merger during the course of negotiations. "We met all of the CVM's demands, communicating every step we were taking after the leaks occurred, communicating the truth of the facts," he emphasized.
Marchi did not wish to provide figures concerning the merger, nor even his expectations about the jobs that will be created as a result of this decision. He limited himself to affirming that the merger "was only possible, because the country maintains a policy of stability and very substantial growth prospects." If the merger is approved, the new brewery will represent assets on the order of US$ 27 billion and a production of 164 million hectoliters of beer. (DAS)
