Asahi has beaten a host of regional heavyweights in the race to buy SABMiller’s Central and Eastern European beer brands, the Japanese brewer announced on December 13.

The Asian giant said it has agreed a €7.3bn deal to buy the five beer producers from Anheuser-Busch InBev. The brewing businesses formerly owned by SABMiller in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia are being spun off to appease anti-trust regulators as part of Anheuser-Busch InBev's $100bn-plus takeover. The jewel in the portfolio is Plzensky Prazdroj, the Czech brewery that makes Pilsner Urquell, amongst other brands.

Asahi will now seek approval from EU regulators for the deal, which it hopes to conclude by the end of 2017, the Japanese company said in a statement.

The package also includes Dreher in Hungary, Poland's Tyskie and Lech, Slovakia's Topvar, and Ursus in Romania. Earlier this year, Exane BNP Paribas analysts estimated the brands accounted for about $2.3bn in sales.

The deal is the biggest ever by a Japanese brewer. Asahi announced in October an agreement to pay €2.55bn for several of SABMiller brands in Western Europe. The deal to the east will help it widen its reach across the region, the statement suggests.

However, investors are not so sure. With Japanese firms aggressively looking for overseas expansion opportunities as their home market shrinks, Asahi appears to have been forced to hike its offer to beat off competition from both international and local financial investors.

The Japanese group was reported to have originally bid €4.3bn, with other offers  said to have come from a bevy of international funds, including a joint venture between US buyout fund Bain Capital and European private equity firm Advent. Another US fund, KKR, was said to have made a joint offer with Mid Europa Partners.

Swiss investment firm Jacobs Holdings and Canadian pension fund PSP Investments were also reported to be in the game. The local competition was reportedly provided by Czech financial group PPF and an intriguing tie-up between Polish state-controlled insurance giant PZU and Hungarian oil major Mol.

The pricing of over €4bn always appeared a little rich for some of those suitors, but Asahi looks to have been pushed hard to outbid them. The offer represents a multiple of 14.8x EBITDA, according to Reuters, higher than the 12-14x times brewing assets in mature markets often fetch.

The announcement saw Asahi shares close 4.6% lower on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, with the market reportedly nervous about how the Japanese brewer will fund the acquisition.

However, the deal will likely be welcomed in Prague. Pilsner Urquell is one of the Czech Republic’s star brands, with no little national pride wrapped up in brewing in what is the largest per capita consumer market in the world.

Local media has been rife with speculation that PPF – the investment vehicle of the country’s reclusive richest man, Petr Kellner – planned complex and opaque financial engineering and a quick sale should it have won the right to buy.