Sun International Ltd

PEERMONT ACQUISITION COLLAPSES

Sun International will pay R675 million to South African hotel and casino operator Peermont Global after an attempt to buy the closely held company collapsed amid a failure to win antitrust approval. The owner of the Sun City resort had agreed to pay as much as R900m to Peermont if the deal failed and a new complex at Menlyn Maine, Pretoria, started operations. A settlement was reached as the resort is at an advanced stage of construction and will open in April, Sun International said on Wednesday.

Peermont had objected to the project in the high court before a deal was struck to combine the companies. Sun International agreed to buy Peermont for R9.4bn in March last year to add resorts such as Johannesburg’s Emperors Place, and resolve the dispute over the Menlyn Maine complex. The Competition Commission recommended in December that the deal be blocked due to the effect on the gambling market in Gauteng. The Competition Tribunal was due to conduct a hearing into the takeover in June, three months after a March 31 approval deadline set by the companies, Sun International said.

South Africa’s competition authorities have a history of taking their time to investigate acquisitions. Anheuser-Busch InBev, the Belgian maker of beers including Budweiser and Stella Artois, is still waiting for the Competition Commission to finish a probe into its $106bn takeover of SABMiller after the regulator missed at least four deadlines. SABMiller and Coca-Cola received final approval to combine African bottling operations earlier this month after an 18-month process, about the same time it took Wal-Mart to get the go-ahead to buy a majority stake in Massmart.