Heineken family rejected SABMiller takeover offer: Bloomberg

LONDON/AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Global brewer SABMiller has made a takeover approach to the family owners of Heineken that has been rejected, Bloomberg reported on Sunday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

The newswire said SABMILLER (SAB.LO)s approach was made as part of a strategy to protect itself from any potential bid from SAB's larger rival, world No.1 brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev.

A tie-up between SABMiller, which has a market capitalization of 55 billion pounds ($90 billion), and HEINEKEN (HEIA.AM) with a market capitalization of 34 billion euros ($44 billion), would combine the world's second- and third-largest brewers.

SAB and Heinken both declined to comment on the matter.

Any potential takeover of Heineken would need the approval of the founding family, which controls the brewer via holding vehicle Heineken Holding.

Bloomberg reported from its sources that the offer would have made the Heineken family one of the largest shareholders in the combined group. The newswire also said that the approach was made in the last two weeks.

SAB, the maker of Miller Lite, Peroni and Grolsch beers is struggling to grow in Europe and North America. New revenues from emerging middle-classes in developing markets have been dented by weak currencies in many of those countries of late.

Heineken, the largest player in mature western Europe, has steadily expanded in faster-growing emerging markets, including Mexico and in Asia.

From an antitrust point of view, there would be considerable areas of overlap between the two, including in the Netherlands, parts of Africa and Latin America as well as Vietnam and India.

($1 = 0.6147 British Pounds)($1 = 0.7715 Euros)

(Reporting by Thomas Escritt, Sarah Young and Philip Blenkinsop; editing by Keiron Henderson)