The story
Tsingtao Brewery was founded by the Anglo-German Brewery Co. Ltd., an English-German joint stock company based in Hong Kong which owned it until 1916. The brewery sold beers to mainly Europeans in China. The brewery was founded on August 15, 1903, as the Germania-Brauerei Tsingtao Co., Ltd (Germania Brewery) with a paid-in capital of 400,000 Mexican silver dollars divided into 4,000 shares priced at $100 each.
Founding members of the Supervisory Board
John Prentice, of SC Farnham, Boyd & Co., Ltd., Shanghai
Alexander McLeod, of Gibb, Livingston & Co., Shanghai
C. W. Wrightson, of Fearon, Daniel & Co., Shanghai
Max Slevogt, of Slevogt & Co., Shanghai
J. Jürgen Block, of H. Sietas & Co., Qufu
Brewery Directors
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Heinrich Seifart (1904–November 25, 1907)
Ernst Siemssen (November 1907 – 1914)
Brewmasters
R. Schuster (1904–05)
Martin Wehle (1906–14)
The first beer was served on December 22, 1904.
Following the Siege of Tsingtao during World War I, Qingdao came under Japanese and British military control. On August 16, 1916, an extraordinary general meeting was held in Shanghai. Liquidators were appointed and it was decided the company would be sold to the Dai-Nippon Brewery (大日本麦酒, which in 1949 would be split into Asahi Breweries and what later became Sapporo Brewery). The Japanese military administration in Qingdao approved the liquidation on September 9, 1916. German equity was approximately 70 percent. The German share of the sales price attributable to shareholders was in the hands of the liquidators by April 2, 1921.
Nationalization
After Japan's surrender to the Allies and its retreat from China at the end of World War II, the Tsingtao Brewery was turned into a Chinese brewery under ownership of the Tsui family and the supervision of the Nationalist government in Nanjing. However, that period of ownership only lasted until 1949 when, after the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, the new People's Republic of China confiscated all the shares in the Tsingtao Brewery, that had previously belonged to the Tsui family, and the business became a state-owned enterprise.
Privatization
The company was privatized in the early 1990s and in 1993 merged with three other breweries in Qingdao and was finally renamed Tsingtao Brewery Company Limited. In June 1993, Tsingtao Brewery became the first Chinese firm listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
At one point 27% of the company was owned by Anheuser-Busch. The company once owned several other breweries in China, some of which also produced Tsingtao Beer.
On January 23, 2009, Anheuser-Busch InBev announced that it was selling 19.9% to Asahi Breweries for $667 million. The sale would make Asahi Breweries, Ltd. the second largest shareholder in Tsingtao behind only the Tsingtao Brewery Group. On May 9, 2009, Anheuser-Busch InBev sold its remaining 7% to Chinese tycoon Chen Fashu (陈发树) for $235 million.
In January 2017, Asahi Breweries announced that it would sell its 20 percent share in Tsingtao which it had owned since 2009; the value of this share of the company was estimated at US$1.1 billion.
From Wikipedia’s article on Tsingtao Brewery, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5