C-C Amatil to review two bids for Coca-Cola Korea

MELBOURNE/SEOUL, June 13 (Reuters) Australian soft drinks firm Coca-Cola Amatil Ltd. said on Wednesday it will review final bids for its South Korean operations in late June, with two companies confirming they had submitted final bids.

SPC Group, the parent of Samlip General Foods , said on Wednesday it had made a final bid for the business, which has a book value of about A0 million (8 million).

LG Household and Health Care Ltd. said late on Tuesday it had submitted a final bid, after a second round of offers closed this week.

A third bidder -- a consortium of private equity fund MBK Partners and Woongjin Capital, an affiliate of South Korea's Woongjin Foods -- said on Wednesday it had dropped out of the race because of a disagreement over price.

Coca-Cola Amatil declined to comment on the bidders on the shortlist.

''The Coca-Cola Amatil board will be meeting in the last week of June and will review the progress of the sale process,'' a company spokeswoman said.

The review process is two weeks later than previously planned. Under the original timetable outlined in April, the company said it expected to evaluate bids in mid-June.

Coca-Cola Amatil said in February it had appointed Goldman Sachs JBWere to review its South Korean business, bought in 1998 for US1 million, whose growth is slowing as more consumers turn to healthier, low-sugar drinks.

U.S.-based Coca-Cola Co. owns 35 percent of Coca-Cola Amatil.

Coca-Cola Amatil told Reuters back in April that its ''line in the sand'' for selling the unit was achieving close to its A0 million book value.

Most analysts had expected it would fetch no more than A0 million.

The Australian Financial Review reported on Wednesday the company was trying to negotiate higher offers from the remaining bidders to get as close as possible to A0 million.

Coca-Cola controls 48 percent of South Korea's soft drinks market but lost volume following a recall of Coca-Cola bottles last July after a criminal poisoning case.

Coca-Cola Amatil earned A million in 2006 in South Korea, up from a loss of A.2 million a year earlier, helped by an A.5 million profit on the sale of properties.

Reuters DKS VP0723