BRUSSELS (AP) -- Anheuser-Busch InBev SA, the world's largest brewer, said Friday it would sell off a 7 percent stake in China's Tsingtao Brewery Co. Ltd to Chinese investor Chen Fashu for $235 million.
The sale is the latest business AB InBev is offloading to raise cash to repay the massive debt burden it built up last year to pay for the $52 billion takeover that formed it.
It struck a $1.8 billion deal on Thursday to sell South Korea's Oriental Brewery to private equity fund Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. LP. and says it wants to make at least $7 billion from asset sales this year.
The Tsingtao sale sees it sever its connection with China's biggest beer company after Chinese antitrust regulators capped the company's stake and curbed its future growth in the world's most populous nation.
Regulators barred AB InBev from increasing Anheuser-Busch's 27 percent stake in Tsingtao or InBev's 28.5 percent holding in Zhujiang Beer Ltd, saying they needed to prevent the brewer from becoming a monopoly.
AB InBev reacted by selling off most of its Tsingtao stake to Japan-based Asahi Breweries in January, which paid $667 million for a 19.9 percent shareholding. At the time, AB InBev said it had no plans to divest the remaining stake.