Kirkland Advises Molson Coors in $12B Acquisition of SABMiller’s Interest in MillerCoors Joint Venture

Kirkland & Ellis LLP advised Molson Coors Brewing Co. (NYSE: TAP; TSX: TPX), which announced today its definitive agreement with Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (Euronext: ABI; NYSE: BUD) to purchase SABMiller plc’s (LSE: SAB; JSE: SAB) 58 percent stake in MillerCoors, the joint venture formed in the United States by SABMiller and Molson Coors in 2008. Molson Coors currently owns 42 percent of MillerCoors. Under the agreement, Molson Coors will also acquire full ownership of the Miller brand portfolio outside of the United States and retain the rights to all the brands currently in the MillerCoors portfolio for the U.S. market, including Redd’s and import brands such as Peroni and Pilsner Urquell. The transaction is valued at $12 billion. To read more about the transaction, please click here.

The Kirkland team is led by M&A partners Scott Falk and Jon-Micheal Wheat; debt finance partners Christopher Butler and Amy Peters; capital markets partners Christian Nagler and David Curtiss; antitrust partners Paula Riedel and Shaun Goodman; tax partners Dean Shulman, Mike Carew and Benjamin Schreiner; and intellectual property partners Jeffery Norman and William Helmstetter. Cleary Gottlieb also advised Molson Coors with respect to U.S. antitrust.