Suntory set to price up to $4.8 billion IPO, bolstering M&A warchest

By Taiga Uranaka and Ritsuko Shimizu

TOKYO (Reuters) - Suntory Holdings Ltd's food and soft drinks unit is set to price on Monday an initial public offering that could raise as much as $4.8 billion, making it Asia's biggest IPO this year and bolstering the company's warchest for overseas acquisitions.

The IPO of the unit, Suntory Beverage and Food Ltd , is a test of investor appetite for new listings at a time of high volatility in Japanese stock markets. The benchmark Nikkei <.n225> has lost about 17 percent since hitting a 5-1/2 year high in late May.

The maker of Boss canned coffee will use the funds to ramp up its acquisition drive with a focus on fast-growing Southeast Asia, although it and Japanese peers like Kirin Holdings Co Ltd are facing intensifying competition for beverage-company acquisitions in that region.

"There are a host of enthusiastic buyers, and sellers tend to be bullish," said Masaaki Kitami, an analyst at Merrill Lynch Japan Securities Co.

Suntory Beverage said last week that it had set an indicative range of 3,000 yen to 3,800 yen per share, a relatively wide band in reflection of the recent stock market volatility. About 40 percent of its outstanding shares are on offer.

At the top of the range, it would raise 470 billion yen ($4.8 billion) including the overallotment. That would be more than double the $2.1 billion raised by the infrastructure fund of Thailand's BTS Group Holdings Pcl , which has been the biggest IPO in Asia so far this year.

At that price, it would give Suntory Beverage a market capitalization of 1.17 trillion yen, behind Kirin's 1.6 trillion yen and Asahi Group Holdings' 1.2 trillion yen.

OVERSEAS EXPANSION

Privately held Suntory Holdings is led by President Nobutada Saji, the 67-year-old grandson of the company's founder. Although the company is known for its Premium Malt's beer and whisky, its non-alcoholic drinks unit Suntory Beverage generates half of the group's revenue.

Suntory Beverage said it expects its net profit to rise 50 percent to 35 billion yen and its revenue to increase 14 percent to 1.13 trillion yen this year. It has set a target for annual revenue growth of at least 5 percent over the next three years.

In Japan, Suntory is the second-largest soft drinks maker after Coca-Cola Co and the gap in their market share has been narrowing. "In terms of domestic share, Coca-Cola is 27.9 percent and Suntory 19.6 percent. The gap used to be much bigger," said Kazuhiro Miyashita, editor of a trade magazine.

Still, Suntory and its rivals see little room for growth in their saturated home market and have set their sights overseas in recent years.

Suntory acquired soft drinks maker Orangina Schweppes and New Zealand's No. 2 beverage firm Funcor Group, both in 2009. In 2011, it entered into a joint venture with Indonesian food and beverage group GarudaFood. Suntory has said that it is also eyeing the Middle East, Africa and Latin America through acquisitions.

But industry officials and analysts say that acquisitions, especially in Southeast Asia, are increasingly costly and difficult to execute.

Such concerns came to light earlier this year when Kirin lost the chance to buy Singapore-listed Fraser and Neave Ltd's (F&N) food and beverage business after Thailand's TCC Assets Ltd and Thai Beverage PCL successfully acquired the control of F&N.

Kirin sold its 15 percent stake in F&N to TCC Assets after a Thai beer baron won a two-month bidding war with an Indonesian group, a major setback for the Japanese company to gain quick access to the market. ($1 = 97.4750 Japanese yen)

(Reporting by Taiga Uranaka, Emi Emoto and Ritsuko Shimizu; Editing by Chris Gallagher)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/suntory-set-price-4-8-billion-ipo-bolstering-040509583.html

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Why Are Guys Afraid to Wear Speedos?

A man prepares to swim on bank of a canal in subzero temperatures in central Beijing, Dec. 7, 2012.

Photot by Petar Kujundzic/Reuters

Summer is here, and again I am seething with frustration. Why? Every year I scan the beaches for men in Speedos and every year I am disappointed. The ridiculous board-shorts trend shows no sign of waning. I had high hopes for change after last year?s Olympics, when the entire nation was gripped by the spectacle of those jackknifing water sprites in their micro-briefs. (Those preposterously teensy swim skivvies worn by Tom Daley et al could only be explained by some kind of harsh polyester-rationing scheme: ?Sorry, boys, but only 1 square inch of fabric per customer. Don?t worry. It is quite stretchy.?) I just assumed that, come this summer, one might see an increased willingness on the part of the U.S. male to embrace a little European savoir-faire. But, yet again, all I see are men in billowing shorts.

My interest is not entirely sordid. My primary motivation is, in fact, safety. Dudes are getting waterlogged, and dudes are sinking. In the course of my far-from-extensive research, I spoke to legendary West Coast swimwear magnate Mr. Turk. He shares my conviction that ?board-shorts aficionados are drowning because their swimsuits are so voluminous.? A California lifeguard pal of Turk?s has been obliged, on more than one occasion, ?to pull guys out of the surf because they get tangled up in huge baggy shorts.?

Drowning is not the only peril: Yes, I?m talking about gender misidentification. This past weekend I spotted two burly figures walking toward me wearing what I assumed were large peasant skirts. ?What made these two beefy, short-haired possibly lesbians decide to go topless?? I asked myself. Upon closer inspection, they turned out to be a couple of dudes with man boobs in garishly printed board shorts, prompting the question: Why do American men insist on concealing their willies ?neath yards of fabric?

If only Freud could have lived long enough to dissect the semiotics of Speedos. What would he have made of the U.S. male?s horror of being caught in a tiny swimsuit? (I use the word ?horror? advisedly. For my straight friends, the most traumatizing moments in HBO?s recent Liberace movie Behind the Candelabra occurred when Matt Damon, Mr. Bourne Identity, was forced to prance about in panty-size swim briefs.) I was raised in the U.K. and grew up thinking sassier swimwear was normal, but I then moved to the U.S. and became indoctrinated into the cult of Speedo shame. So I feel uniquely qualified to address this issue. I have, as it were, a foot in both gussets.

Clearly there is a class issue. WASPs don?t do Speedos?old money has no need to resort to gratuitous flesh exposure to achieve social currency. Butt cracks are banned at the country club. Nobody has ever come upon a cache of old Kennedy family snapshots and found images of Jack, Bobby, and Teddy strutting round Martha?s Vineyard in stretch velour leopard swim briefs (like the ones I once purchased at Frederick?s of Hollywood when I lived up the street in the early 1980s).

Speedo-wearing is also a cultural flashpoint. Revealing men?s swim garments are, for the U.S. consumer, irrevocably associated with ?foreigners? and, most terrifying of all, friends of Dorothy. However, there is something even more mysterious to this issue than the persistent fear of being mistaken for a bisexual Serbian cruise-ship croupier: American dudes are driven by a Wizard of Oz?like desire to ?curtain off? their genitals. They are impelled to gird up their loins with yards of fabric, thereby protecting?symbolically and literally?their reproductive equipment, while sinewy Spaniards, hard-body Greeks, bronzed Aussies, diverse Latin Americans, and pale squishy Brits take a reverse approach. These fellows prefer to wear swimsuits that say, ?In case you wondered, I am the proud possessor of male genitalia, and in case you don?t believe me, here it is!?

I argue that the Puritans who colonized America are to blame. There they go again, spoiling all our European fun with their exaggerated notions of modesty. If I run into any Puritans on Long Island this summer (stranger things have happened), I intend to give them a piece of my mind: ?Why do you persist in making dudes wear dirndl skirts while you allow their girlfriends to dress like vacationing strippers??

As The Soup?s Joel McHale says every week, ?Let?s talk about chicks, man.?

American women have never presented themselves with more over-the-top va-va-voom than they do now, especially on the beach. Bikinis have never been smaller. Hoochies have never been hotter. Tramp stamps have never been trampier. It?s obviously time for men to correct this inequity, join the partaay, and start channeling their inner Magic Mike ? or inner Borat.

Lastly, let me address the elephant in the Vilebrequin. I am talking about lard. Are most American dudes simply too fat to wear a Speedo? Is that what?s inhibiting men from embracing this comfy, functional garment? Does it only work if you are some Tom Daley-esque Adonis? Mr. Turk weighs in: ?Your moobs [man-boobs] and your widening gut are going to be visible either way. I say throw on a pair of groovy ?70s shades?like the guy in those Southern Comfort ads?and learn to strut in a nifty brief or a spiffy square-cut trunk.?

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/doonan/2013/06/men_in_speedos_american_men_need_to_get_over_their_fear_of_wearing_swim.html

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