C&C downs Tennent’s

One of Britain's most wholesome brands of alcohol (if such a thing exists) is to merge with a booze brand with one of the roughest reputations of the lot.

Irish drinks group C&C, which has spent millions promoting the lifestyle drinking brand Magners Irish Cider, has bought Tennent's, a drink that markets itself as "Scotland's leading lager brand" but which is better-known in the South as the favoured tipple of TV character Rab C Nesbitt, and of drunks residing in doorways.

C&C is paying £180 million for the Scottish and Irish businesses of Anheuser-Busch Inbev. For that, it is getting the Tennent's brand — reckoned to account for half of all lager drunk north of the border — and the Wellpark Brewery in Glasgow.

It will also get the Scottish and Irish distribution rights to certain Anheuser-Busch Inbev brands including Stella Artois and Beck's. The deal comes as C&C reported no better news for Magners, which has been in a slump since the heady summer days of 2006 when everybody was trying cider-over-ice. Latest cider revenues are down 4%.