THE British pound’s flash crash could not have come at a worse time for South African shareholders who will receive rand payment based on Monday’s rand-sterling exchange rate.Last week’s collapse in sterling may have wiped out most of the takeover premium in Anheuser-Busch (AB) InBev’s £45 a share payment for SABMiller’s South African investors. At R17.31 to the pound, the sterling-rand exchange rate on Friday was almost 18% weaker than the level that prevailed in November 2015, when AB InBev announced its £44 a share offer for SABMiller.At the time, the offer represented an attractive, 22% premium on the pre-offer share price and was considered sufficiently generous to win shareholder backing.At the time it cost about R22 to buy a single pound sterling, valuing the £44 offer at R968 per SABMiller share. As the pound went from strength to strength, the offer looked ever more attractive to rand-based shareholders. In May, SABMiller reached a high of R980 on the JSE, up from about R87...
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