Anheuser-Busch InBev plans to sell off nearly half of the world's largest beer brand in an effort to gain regulatory approval for a merger with SABMiller.
State-owned China Resources Beer will pay $1.6 billion to buy SABMiller's 49 percent stake in their China Resources Snow Breweries joint venture.
Since the joint venture was established in 1994, Snow Beer grew to become the world's largest by volume.
AB InBev, however, hopes to acquire SABMiller later this year in an effort to bolster their offerings in the growing African and Latin American markets.
The proposed $107 billion merger would combine the world's largest and second-largest brewers and account for nearly one-third of the global beer market.
The massive scale of the proposal will likely require the companies to sell off numerous assets in order to appease antitrust regulators.
Two prominent SABMiller brands in Europe — Italy's Peroni and the Netherlands' Grolsch — are reportedly on the chopping block, while SABMiller's stake in the MillerCoors joint venture is considered likely to be sold as well.
The Snow deal was widely anticipated by industry experts, but it came sooner and cheaper than many expected. Jeremy Yeo of Mizuho Securities Asia told Fortune the price tag was projected to hit $3 billion or more.
