Don’t mess with Australia!

Mr Murray, who has headed Lion Nathan for more than five years, will report to a board of three Kirin directors and three independent local directors, including Chairman Geoff Ricketts. Mr Murray, who will be the seventh director, says that he wants the new subsidiary to retain a public company-style operation and he hopes that it will “go forward using his partnership principles”.

As there are no overlapping manufacturing bases, no overlapping customer bases and no overlapping supply chains, there will be no attempt to integrate the brewing and dairy operations. Hence they will keep their separate offices in Sydney and Melbourne respectively. “The main thing is not to try to put together things that do not belong together. They are the lessons learned from other companies”, Mr Murray was reported as saying, implicitly referring to rival Foster’s, whose attempt at integrating its wine and beer businesses has failed spectacularly.

Earlier this year, Kirin acquired the rest of Lion Nathan as part of President Kazuyasu Kato’s plan to double the corporation’s share of overseas sales to 30 percent by 2015. The Tokyo-based company has acquired assets in Australia, China and the Philippines as demand stalls at home.

Mr Murray told Australian media in October 2009 that in Japan they have an ageing population, a shrinking population - and more people outside the workforce than in it. As Mr Murray sees it, Kirin needed something that fits the stable growth, relatively low-risk range. Therefore Kirin expanded into his part of the world.