Heineken is to launch an offer to acquire a majority stake in Austrian-based brewery group BBAG with brands such as Zipfer, Goesser and Edelweiss.

The Dutch brewer has offered 769m euros for GeBAG, which owns a 68.7% of BBAG's share capital closes on June 13.

Heineken will then launch a public offer for the outstanding free float of BBAG and its sub-holding Brau Union to take control of BBAG for 1.9bn, made up of 1.5bn in cash and 0.4bn of debt.

Heineken said BBAG is one of the largest brewery groups in Central Europe with a market share of 14.1% and had net sales of 906m euros in 2002.

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