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Bosnia, Sarajevo: The Bosnian Serb privatisation agency has annulled a tender for the sale of a majority stake in Banjalucka Pivara, Bosnia's biggest brewery, because none of the offers were valid, it said on April 16, according to Reuters. The authorities advertised the sale of a 53.81 % stake in the brewery in January and the tender closed on April 15.

"The international tender for the sell-off of the state capital in Banjalucka Pivara was annulled as none of the bids was formally and legally valid," the agency said in a statement, without giving details. The privatisation agency did not release a price for the stake in the sole brewery in the country's Serb Republic but the regional government had earlier put its value at 43 million Bosnian marka ($26.2 million).

The agency also did not name the firms that had made offers in the tender. However, the brewery's general manager said on April 16 that London-based SABMiller Plc, Belgium's Interbrew, Denmark's Carlsberg breweries A/S and Heineken through its Austrian subsidiary BBAG were among the bidders.

Predrag Radic told the daily Nazavisne Novine that Austria's Ottakringer and Slovenia's Pivovarna Lasko had also asked for the tender documentation. The Slovenian brewery requested on April 16 a 60-day extension of the tender, which "would enable Pivovarna Lasko to study once more the market situation in the Serb Republic and set an adequate price for the agency and for the other owners."

"Though Pivovarna Lasko has not submitted a bid for this stake ... it is still interested in a strategic linkage with Banjalucka Pivara," it said in a statement. Nobody from the agency was immediately available to comment.

The bidders were required to have been in the beer business for 10 years and have an annual net revenue of at least 100 million marka. They had to accept the company's social programme and agree to offer to buy out minority shareholders.

This was the second attempt to sell the brewery. Interbrew pulled out from a nearly completed deal in 2001 due to disagreement with the management on how to run the company after privatisation.


21 April, 2004