Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) is an Australian brewing company based in Melbourne and owned by Japanese conglomerate Asahi Breweries. Its notable brands include Victoria Bitter, Carlton Draught, Foster's Lager, Great Northern, Resch's, Pure Blonde and Melbourne Bitter. CUB was established in 1907 as a merger of six existing breweries with Carl Pinschof as chairman and became a public company in 1913. It first expanded outside Victoria in 1931 and acquired a number of other brewing companies over the following decades. In 1983 it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Elders IXL and CUB was delisted from the stock exchange. In 1990, Elders IXL was renamed Foster's Group, and in July 2004, Fosters Group changed its name to Carlton & United Beverages. In February 2009, CUB announced the decision to separate the Australian Wine division from the Australian Beer, Cider & Spirits (BCS) division, and rename BCS to Carlton & United Breweries. In December 2011, American multinational SABMiller acquired Foster's Group, and took over ownership of Carlton & United Breweries as part of the acquisition. Subsequently, in October 2016, CUB was included in the purchase of SABMiller by Anheuser-Busch InBev. SABMiller ceased trading on global stock markets and as a result, Carlton & United was then owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev. In July 2019, Asahi Breweries agreed to purchase CUB, with the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission and Foreign Investment Review Board approving the deal in May 2020. History Carlton and United Breweries was formed in 1907 with the merger of six major Australian breweries: Carlton Brewery, Castlemaine Brewery Company (Melbourne), Foster Brewing Company, McCracken's City Brewery, Shamrock Brewing and Malting Company and Victoria Brewery. The six breweries - along with another two (Melbourne Brewery and Distillery Pty Ltd and Coghlan and Tulloch's Ballarat Brewing Co Ltd) - had formed a cartel known as the Society of Melbourne Brewers in 1903. Emil Resch played a significant role in enabling the amalgamation. Resch also went on to become the first general manager of CUB. The company became public in 1913 with the issue of 100,000 shares. Over time it has bought out many other brewers, such as Abbotsford Co-operative Brewery in 1924 (a company set up by independent hoteliers to combat the anti-competitive nature of the Society of Melbourne Brewers.) Their first interstate acquisition was Northern Australian Breweries and the Cairns Brewery in 1931. Further acquisitions were the Ballarat Brewing Company, Queensland