Who owns SAN MIGUEL BEER?

SAN MIGUEL BEER is owned by

San Miguel Beer was introduced in the San Miguel neighborhood of Manila, Philippines in 1890 by Enrique María Barretto de Ycaza y Esteban. At the time, the Philippines was a Spanish colony, and Barretto was awarded a Spanish royal grant to brew beer in Manila for twenty years. The company incorporated in 1893, and Barretto sold his shares to another investor, Pedro Pablo Róxas, in 1896. That year, San Miguel also had become the best-selling beer in the country, outselling all import beers by a factor of 5 to 1. The Spanish-American War of 1898 ended Spanish rule in the country, rendering the royal grant null and void.

The brewery expanded quickly, and by 1913 San Miguel held an 88% share of the market. The following year, it began to export to Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Guam. In the 1920s, San Miguel began to expand into other products, including soft drinks and ice cream, and later changed their name to the San Miguel Corporation. They also invested in breweries in the United States after prohibition, including now-defunct brewery George Muehlebach Brewing Company (later sold to Schlitz) and Lone Star Brewery (now owned by Pabst).

The company wanted to take advantage of the shared history between Filipinos and Spain, and in 1953 created an agreement (later called the Manila Agreement) which gave branding rights for San Miguel Beer to the shareholders of La Segarra S.A. They later changed their name to San Miguel, Fábricas de Cerveza y Malta, S.A. in 1957, and in 2000 purchased fellow Spanish brewery Mahou to become Mahou San Miguel. They now own the rights to sell San Miguel beer in European and North Africa, while San Miguel Corporation retains those distribution rights everywhere else.