Leading beer company Guinness announces its decision to leave the Nigerian market due to the unsettling business environment and disastrous economic policies of the administration led by President Bola Tinubu. Before leaving the country of West Africa in January of next year, the company, which has been in operation in Nigeria since 1950, will now sell off its majority stake to the Singaporean conglomerate Tolaram.
The remarkable N61.9 billion loss after taxes recorded between July 2023 and March 2024 may not be unrelated to the company’s impending exit. Recall that Tinubu had floated the naira in an attempt to harmonize the value of the currency on the official and black market foreign exchange exchanges.
However, the decision proved disastrous for a number of global corporations, like Guinness Nigeria, since they experienced severe financial losses due to the decimation of their earnings.
Compared to the N5.9 billion profit made during the same period last year, Guinness Nigeria’s N61.7 billion loss after taxes in Q3 signified a 1,000% reduction. Diageo, the parent firm of Guinness, may have been forced to sell the Singaporean corporation its 58.02 percent majority ownership due to the enormous loss made worse by the naira’s ongoing decline.
“Under the terms of an agreement signed today, 11 June 2024, Tolaram will acquire Diageo’s 58.02% shareholding in Guinness Nigeria royalty agreements for the continued production of the Guinness brand and its locally manufactured Diageo ready-to-drink and mainstream spirits brands,” the company said in a statement Tuesday.
Guinness Nigeria Plc, a public limited liability company quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, was incorporated on April 29, 1950, as a trading company importing Guinness Stout from Dublin.
The Guinness brand has operated in Nigeria since 1950, but with Tolaram’s controlling stake acquisition expected to conclude by 2025, the global brewery brand will have spent 75 years in Nigeria.
Guinness announced in the statement that the company will exit Nigeria the next year and turn over to a third-party enterprise.
Guinness announced in the statement that the company will exit Nigeria the next year and turn over to a third-party enterprise.
