Tell stories and make friends – acquisitions are not just about numbers
Carlsberg’s takeover of British soft drink company Britvic created the UK’s biggest multi-beverage supplier and made the country one of Carlsberg Group’s largest markets. In the fireside chat titled "Inside Carlsberg’s £3.3 billion Britvic acquisition" at the Treasury 360° Nordic 2025 conference, Group Treasury Head Mads Jæger took to the stage to tell the story.
When Jæger was approached by his higher-ups regarding the acquisition of Britvic, he already had an idea of how to fund it. Financing and debt capacity exercises at Carlsberg occur “once a year, or a little bit more often than that”, so the treasury team went in with “a pretty good idea” of what the debt capacity was.
Then, came the task of picking a bank. BNP Paribas emerged as the bank of choice after Jæger narrowed down his options to three Group 1 (G1) banks as defined by the Financial Stability Board’s (FSB) Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB) rating. He admitted that existing relationships with the banks played a crucial role in his decision making, even at the shortlisting stage. That added a layer of consideration in addition to more pragmatic concerns such as position financing and the bank’s size – “to make sure we had enough capacity”.
Foreign interest
At the funding stage, FX risk was a concern. The acquisition of Britvic meant that there was “a huge sterling exposure all of a sudden”. Even though Carlsberg already had a UK franchise prior to that, it was still “very much a euro and krona-based company” with some exposure to Asian currencies and US dollar purchases. “Big sterling exposure was new for us,” says Jæger.
The team’s strategy to manage FX risk “started out with simply”, with sterling call options. FX forwards were added after the shareholder vote in August 2024. In December, with the acquisition close to completion, the firm decided to exercise the options. The entirety of these efforts brought the firm’s hedging ratio up to 90 per cent.
The complete story
Numbers tell only one part of the story. Elias Burell, Director of Debt Markets EMEA at BNP Paribas, who shared the stage with Jæger, pointed out that marketing is equally important in an acquisition. “You need to be out there speaking to your investors, selling the credit story… To really get the buy-in from accounts that you need to drive that demand and drive that aura around the take-up.”
Jæger agreed, saying, “For Carlsberg, we have the joy of being a well-known brand. We saw that when we went out into the funding market, we didn’t have to do a lot of marketing. People know Carlsberg.”
Thanks to its reputation, the firm was able to announce on a Friday that they would be holding investor meetings, hold those meetings on Monday and Tuesday, and go to market on Wednesday.
Speakers:
Mads Jæger, VP Group Treasury and Risk Management, Carlsberg Group
Elias Selbing Burell, Director, Debt Markets EMEA, BNP Paribas
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