Heineken Raises Stake In United Breweries By 2.8%

Heineken International BV raised its stake in United Breweries Ltd. after it acquired Vijay Mallya’s 74.05 lakh shares in the domestic liquor maker.

The largest stakeholder of United Breweries acquired the shares at Rs 1,361.35 apiece, amounting to Rs 1,008 crore via a bulk deal on India’s BSE, according to data released by the exchange. After the transaction, the stake of Heineken Group will increase to 46.53 percent from 43.73 percent. Mallya’s stake, too, will fall from 8.08 percent.

This comes after a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act court allowed the sale of shares by Debt Recovery Tribunal to partly recover the outstanding dues of Kingfisher Airlines.

The Enforcement Directorate said the shares, attached by the agency as part of its money laundering probe against Mallya, were lying with Yes Bank Ltd. and the Karnataka High Court had recently ordered the bank to surrender these in favour of the Debt Recovery Tribunal in Bangalore, newswire PTI reported.

The sale is the first of Mallya’s confiscated assets since he left the country in March 2016.

Shares of United Breweries hit a record of Rs 1,485.75 on Jan. 21 but have declined since then. That compares with the NSE Nifty 500 Index’s gain of nearly 4 percent, according to Bloomberg data.