SABMiller tipped to buy Korean brewery

Brewer SABMiller could be in the frame for a $2.5 million (£1.7 billion) acquisition of the South Korean business of Anheuser-Busch InBev.

The Belgium-based maker of Budweiser and Stella Artois is understood to be talking to companies including

London-listed SABMiller, South Korea's Lotte and Japan's Asahi, Bloomberg says. There could also be private-equity interest from Bain Capital and Carlyle, but they could struggle to raise the cash in the current climate.

AB InBev is expecting offers of between $2 billion and $2.5 billion for the Seoul-based Oriental Brewery. If it fetches that, AB InBev would be able to pay almost all the short-term debt component of the $52 billion merger that formed the company last year.

Initial bids for Oriental Brewery are expected by the third week of February. InBev's $7 billion bridging loan, due for repayment in November, has already been cut by $3.5 billion through a bond sale.

Neither AB InBev nor SABMiller would comment.