Coca-Cola keen on at least minority stake in Huiyuan Juice: report

Undaunted by China's rebuff to its acquisition deal with the Huiyuan Juice, China's biggest juice maker, US soft drinks giant, Coca-Cola has still not given up and is now believed to be holding informal talks to buy a minority stake, reported The Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the development.

Under the new anti-monopoly law enacted last year, Chinese anti-trust authorities had rejected Coca-Cola's, $2.4-billion acquisition bid of Beijing-based Huiyuan Juice in March 2009, saying that the deal could restrict competition and lead to higher prices for consumers. (See: China trips Coke on Huiyuan Juice acquisition)

Coca-Cola and Huiyuan's top management is now exploring a wide range of options to enable the Atlanta-based US soft drinks giant acquire at least a minority stake without being rebuffed again by the Chinese anti-trust authorities.

The rejection came despite Coca-Cola having sweetened the $2.4-billion deal by announcing that it will invest $2 billion over a three-year period in China on new plants and distribution infrastructure, sales and marketing and R&D and create more jobs.

While rejecting Coca-Cola's bid, China had said that it did not want to lose an iconic Chinese brand to a foreign company and that the deal would unduly restrict competition, aserting that the regulators had made an objective judgment based on the anti-monopoly law and it was not trade protectionism. (See: China defends refusing Coke deal)

Beijing issued rules in 2006 that bar foreign ownership of companies in power generation, weapons and other industries, but fruit juice makers are not mentioned