Notable in Their Absence From Davos

The annual parade of boldface names at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is always striking. This year’s attendees at the meeting, which begins Wednesday, will include Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe; the billionaire Bill Gates; JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon; and the movie star-philanthropist Matt Damon.

But just as notable are the luminaries who consistently avoid Davos, despite repeated invitations.

The billionaire Warren E. Buffett has never attended. Neither has Timothy D. Cook, chief executive of Apple, the world’s largest company by market value. (His predecessor, Steve Jobs, never went, either.) The founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, stopped going a couple of years ago, as did Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chairman. Both companies do send other executives, though.

The leaders of General Electric and IBM, Jeffrey R. Immelt and Virginia M. Rometty, are not attendees either. “I don’t go to Davos and places like that,” Mr. Immelt once said dismissively.

The World Economic Forum, for which the cost of membership and a ticket to the annual meeting is more than $70,000, is both admired and derided as a velvet-rope club for the 1 percent of the 1 percent. The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, once attended Davos only to dismiss it as “a constellation of egos involved in massive mutual orgies of adulation.”

Whatever their reasons for staying away, the leaders of some of the largest and most transformative companies are demonstrating, with their absence, the difficulty of convening a global conversation with all the main stakeholders. Given that one of the themes this year is how to address economic inequality, it would be helpful to have the world’s largest employers participate in that discussion, not to mention a sampling of rank-and-file workers, who never receive an invitation.

Over the last few weeks, I called more than a dozen A-list names (or their handlers) who either regularly go to Davos or who make a point of staying away. I was intrigued by the reasons some people turn down an invitation coveted by so many others.

Those who attend said most frequently that they did so less for the high-minded panel discussions and more for the sheer efficiency of meeting with so many peers, clients, regulators and politicians at one time. “It would take me an entire year, and I don’t know how many flights, to see the number of people I can in three days at Davos,” one top bank chief executive told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity because Davos attendance can be a polarizing issue.

In the avoider camp is Mohamed A. El-Erian, the chief of Pimco, one of the largest bond investors in the world, and someone who given his background would seem like the perfect Davos man â€" an Egyptian-raised, Oxford-educated global investor. He has rejected repeated invitations to Davos, skeptical of the value of speed-dating with so many clients in the Alps.

“For me, it has been and remains an issue of efficient time management,” he told me in an email. “Our general preference is for more focused and less rushed meetings.” Mr. El-Erian is so anti-Davos he once wrote an article for a magazine distributed at the forum called “Why I Won’t Go to Davos.”

“Over the years, and in the context of an increasingly unsettled and uncertain world,” Mr. El-Erian wrote, “Davos has not had much impact.”

Mr. El-Erian’s rival, Laurence D. Fink, the chairman of BlackRock, which manages more than $4 trillion, had been a skeptic, too â€" until this year. With such a large global business, he has become almost a head of state himself or, more precisely, as important as the head of a central bank, judging by the panel he is speaking on. Mr. Fink is the only business executive on an economic panel that includes Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank; Mark Caney, governor of the Bank of England; Haruhiko Kuroda, governor of the Bank of Japan; Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister; and Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean of the Yale School of Management, who counts many Davos attendees as former students of his executive management program, said that many C.E.O.’s attended every couple of years to “meet new heads of state.” But he said many executives “complain that significant decision-makers are too diluted in number by the tidal waves of aspiring consultants and other wannabes.” (Mr. Sonnenfeld does not attend.)

Others don’t go simply for practical reasons. “It’s inconvenient to get to. There’s a lot of friction. It’s cold. There are a lot of people there. The logistics of just going down the street can be very daunting,” John Kao, chairman of the Institute for Large Scale Innovation and a longtime attendee, told Bloomberg News last year.

To be sure, this year’s event will not lack for big names. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain will be there, as will President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico. So will Jacob J. Lew, the United States Treasury secretary.

The progress they make â€" or try to make â€" may be praiseworthy. But at a time when globalization has so transformed business and economics, and at an event that bills itself as drawing the top stakeholders, it easy to understand why it is so difficult to make progress on the big issues when so many key people are not in the room.

Deutsche Loss Underlines European Economy’s Dependence on Banks

With its surprise report of a billion-euro fourth-quarter loss, Deutsche Bank has provided another reminder that the financial crisis has never really ended for European banks â€" raising questions about whether the Continental economy can recover before they do.

The bank announced the loss, bigger than expected and earlier than it had planned to report, on Sunday night.

Anshu Jain, the co-chief executive of Deutsche Bank, argued during a conference call on Monday that, despite the loss, “2014 will represent the turning point” in dealing with lingering problems of the financial crisis, which include a long list of legal woes and pressure from regulators to reduce risk.

If so, and if Deutsche Bank were part of a turnaround among European banks, it would be good news for the euro zone economy, which is barely growing, in part because credit is scarce.

But it may be more likely that any revival of Deutsche Bank and its big competitors, like Barclays and HSBC, will be based on growth in Asia or the United States and pass Europe by, said Kern Alexander, a professor of law and finance at the University of Zurich. The midsize banks that do much of the business and consumer lending in Europe will continue to struggle, Mr. Alexander said.

“The big global banks that are more multinational and more diverse are able to weather the storm,” he said. “The big question is, Will the banks be able to make loans and help the economy turn the corner?”

Deutsche Bank, based in Frankfurt, is one of the few European banks able to compete globally with United States giants like JPMorgan Chase or Goldman Sachs. Its currency trading business is the largest in the world. As a so-called universal bank, Deutsche Bank also has a large network of consumer banking branches and lends to businesses and consumers.

But investment banking, based largely in London and New York, still accounted for half of Deutsche Bank’s pretax profit last year, and for much of the 965 million euro, or $1.3 billion, quarterly net loss the bank reported late Sunday. Deutsche Bank attributed the loss in part to a decline in bond trading that helped reduce revenue by 16 percent, to €6.6 billion.

As investors worldwide shifted out of bonds and into booming stock markets in the last quarter, Deutsche Bank was hit particularly hard because of its focus on bonds and other fixed-income securities.

The bank also booked additional losses from lawsuits and official inquiries related to suspicions of misconduct in past years, also linked primarily to the investment bank. Deutsche Bank has been accused of being part of a group of banks that colluded to manipulate benchmark interest rates. Litigation charges subtracted €528 million from profit in the fourth quarter.

The Deutsche Bank loss showed how difficult it has been for European banks to keep pace with their American rivals, whose profits have increased sharply. Mr. Jain acknowledged in the conference call that the bank’s greater exposure to Europe, with its barely growing economy, had been a problem.

Like many banks in Europe, Deutsche Bank is also struggling with tougher regulations, which have led it to unload riskier assets and contributed to the drop in revenue.

“The trends of 2013 will likely continue,” Mr. Jain said. “We don’t see a materially better revenue picture at this point.” But he said that the company had cut costs, by simplifying its information technology systems, for example, and that the stage was set for a turnaround in 2015.

The state of banks in Europe is crucial for the economy because European companies are more dependent on bank credit than American businesses. Unlike the United States, Europe lacks a vibrant market for corporate bonds issued by smaller, riskier companies.

In a sign of Deutsche Bank’s importance as a bellwether, the earnings report weighed on other European banks. Deutsche Bank shares fell more than 5 percent on Monday in Frankfurt, and in London, shares of Barclays slid 2 percent and HSBC was down 0.7 percent.

While some of Deutsche Bank’s problems are fairly limited to the bank, others are widespread among European lenders. In particular, almost all banks in Europe are struggling to meet new capital requirements being imposed by the European Union in line with guidelines established by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. The rules will place stricter limits on the amount of borrowed money banks may use to do business.

The new rules have prompted banks to shed assets â€" in Deutsche Bank’s case by 29 percent since the peak in 2006, to a total still valued at about €1 trillion. The pressure for banks to cut their holdings has intensified in recent months as the European Central Bank prepares for a thorough review of bank assets, with an eye to requiring banks to confront hidden problems.

While the reduction in assets should make the banks less prone to crises, it also reduces revenue and profit.

Signs suggest that regulators have concluded that the new rules were in danger of becoming too onerous, and contributing to a credit squeeze that is particularly acute in countries like Italy and Spain.

This month, central bank chiefs and top regulators from around the world that oversee the Basel Committee endorsed changes to proposed rules that would effectively reduce the amount of banks’ own money, as opposed to borrowed funds, that they use to maintain huge stockpiles of derivative securities that they issue and trade on behalf of clients.

Because of its huge derivatives portfolio, Deutsche Bank was seen as a prime beneficiary of the revision by the Basel Committee, which sets benchmarks used by the United States, the European Union, Japan and most large countries.

But Mr. Alexander of the University of Zurich questioned whether the revision would simply allow European banks to further postpone a reckoning with damaged assets and other problems. European regulators have been much less aggressive than United States regulators in requiring banks to clean up bad loans or soured investments, and compelling them to raise more capital.

“It’s an example of the Basel Committee going light-touch,” Mr. Alexander said. “The question is, Will the banks make adjustments with the lighter touch? Or are they just putting off the inevitable where they will have to deal with these bad assets at some point?”

With regards to Deutsche Bank, some analysts were willing to give Mr. Jain and Jürgen Fitschen, the other co-chief executive, the benefit of the doubt.

“DB management deserves credit for moving ahead with resolving some outstanding litigations and running ahead of schedule” in reducing risk, analysts at JPMorgan wrote in a note to clients Monday.

In many ways, Deutsche Bank is better off than many of its European peers because of its base in Germany, where the economy is solid. Banks in countries like Spain and Italy have had to cope with soaring numbers of loans in or near default, a consequence of high unemployment and recession.

One area where Deutsche Bank has not had trouble competing with American rivals is in the scale of accusations of misbehavior, in most cases dating from before the financial crisis began in 2008.

Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $1.9 billion in December to settle claims that it had defrauded the government-controlled companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the sale of mortgage-backed securities before the American real estate market collapsed. In addition, the European Union antitrust authorities fined the bank €725 million for its role in helping to rig benchmark interest rates.

Last week, Deutsche Bank suspended several traders amid investigations into potential manipulation of the $5-trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, according to a person briefed on the matter. The traders who were placed on leave worked in the German bank’s offices in New York.

Mr. Jain said on Monday that the bank had reformed the way it paid executives and begun a campaign to instill a stronger sense of ethics among employees. He said the bank was “utterly committed to a culture which ensures we don’t wind up with new problems.”

Chad Bray contributed reporting.

A Globetrotting Serial Entrepreneur Finds Roots in China’s Start-Up Scene

Richard Robinson tended bar in the Virgin Islands, taught English in Prague, picked grapes in France, painted houses in Norway and toiled at a BMW factory in Munich. But little prepared him for the adventure that awaited him in Hong Kong.

In 1999, he joined Renren, a leading online bulletin board system in the days before the Internet took off.

“We were like the GeoCities of China,” he said, referring to an early web hosting service that nurtured communities, before social networking. Mr. Robinson was vice president for sales and marketing, with 76 employees. “It was like a rocket ship,” he recalled. “We opened offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Singapore, Silicon Valley and New York.”

Renren raised $37 million and then took a backdoor listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, valuing the company at $1.5 billion. Mr. Robinson had gone from itinerant backpacker to multimillionaire. Just as quickly, he was wiped out in the dot-com meltdown.

“I had options worth over $10 million,” he noted. “On paper.” Renren lost 98 percent of its value and was eventually acquired for less than $30 million.

But one of the company’s legacies was moving Mr. Robinson in 2000 to Beijing, where over the last dozen years he has been a serial entrepreneur, involved in various start-ups, mainly focused on mobile Internet and gaming in China. He’s also a fixture on the conference circuit as a resident Chinese information technology expert, a director of many start-ups and a founding member of many networking associations.

“I like to create something out of nothing and build it to where it has value,” he said. Not all of the ventures have proved to be successful, he noted. “The default setting for a start-up is failure,” he explained. “And not just failure, but magnificent, awful, total failure. That doesn’t get said enough. Being a start-up is not sexy at all.”

It helps to have a sense of humor, and Mr. Robinson, a 46-year-old Boston native and amateur comedian, knows about laughs. In his spare time, he runs ChopSchticks, Asia’s biggest comedy booking outfit, and has brought international stand-up comedy to China, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Bangkok.

When Louis C. K. made an unpublicized visit to Beijing in 2012, Mr. Robinson not only quickly organized a show in a historic Peking opera hall that sold out in minutes, he opened for one of the hottest comics on earth. “There we were, two balding old guys, divorced, with two kids,” he said. “But, of course, he’s the famous one.”

But among booming Internet ventures in China, Mr. Robinson probably has more recognition. “He’s a great entrepreneur, very experienced in China,” said Dave McClure, head of 500 Startups and a globe-trotting venture capitalist. Mr. McClure also organizes Geeks on a Plane, taking high-flying technology entrepreneurs on global jet-working trips.

Mr. Robinson joined one tour, and the two men have remained in touch ever since. “For folks coming to China, he’s a huge help,” Mr. McClure said. “He’s really married into the culture, knows the language, and is a fixture there. He really knows what is going on in China.”

Before he became enmeshed in China, Mr. Robinson lived a peripatetic life, traveling the world with a backpack. After earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Southern California in 1989, he traveled widely in Europe and Africa. By his estimation, he visited more than 83 countries and territories. He then completed an M.B.A. at the Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands in 1996.

“When I started grad school, I had no idea what I would do,” he said.

But the moment he arrived in China 20 years ago, he sensed it was the place to hang up his backpack. “I could smell the opportunity,” he quipped. “It was smell-ortunity.”

It was the same exhilaration he felt when he first explored the World Wide Web at his university library. “Right away, I knew I was going to be an Internet entrepreneur in China,” he recalled. “It was like these two big ideas that were perfect together, like chocolate and peanut butter.”

Mr. Robinson most recently was involved with Kooky Panda, which created socially connected mobile games. Before that, he started Dada Asia, a mobile entertainment company that had operations in 10 countries. He previously co-founded Shouji Mobile Entertainment, among China’s leaders in customizing and testing mobile applications, with a customer list that included EA Mobile, Disney Mobile and Vivendi Games. Shouji was gobbled up by China’s huge Tencent.

“I’ve known Richard pretty much since he moved to Beijing from Hong Kong,” said Kaiser Kuo, another longtime participant in the China technology scene, who also played guitar with Tang Dynasty, one of the mainland’s biggest heavy metal groups. The two were involved in several ventures. “I recruited him to a mobile start-up I was involved in 2001,” Mr. Kuo said. Afterward, they worked together at Linktone, a mobile entertainment company.

“I know him to be someone just overflowing with enthusiasm and energy in everything that he does,” said Mr. Kuo, who now heads international communications for the Chinese search engine Baidu. “I’ve seen him in good times and bad â€" and some of those bad times were flat-out horrible â€" but he’s got this unflappable optimism.”

Kooky Panda turned out to be one of those bad times, and Mr. Robinson had to shut it down last year. He said $850,000 was lost. Yet investors offered to bankroll future projects. In this industry, Mr. Robinson said, you aren’t judged by your latest at bat but your previous home runs.

“Woody Allen said something like 80 percent of success is just showing up.” On reflection, he added: “Failure is like scar tissue, more than a badge of honor, in this business. It’s like a suit of armor.”

Mr. Robinson usually has his next venture running before the last one is sold or shut down. For nearly four years, he has worked on Yolu, a mobile app with various capabilities. For microbloggers on Weibo, often called China’s Twitter, Yolu offers features comparable to LinkedIn. A business card reader included in the app is intended to optimize contacts and connections.

Mr. Robinson’s approach to work differs from that of many of his peers: He limits phone and email time. “I shut the phone off and don’t even look at it in the morning,” he said.

“I start my day with a little meditation â€" maybe only 15 minutes,” he added. “Then I dig into my first task.” Focus is essential. “I’m most productive in the morning. I avoid email, and all distractions,” he said. “Email is somebody else’s to-do list.”

The entire day plays out with the same precision. He and his wife are divorced, and he takes his two sons to school in the morning, then commutes to work by subway, where he checks his mail for the first time by phone. And multitasks.

Mr. Robinson relishes the challenge.

“China is a highly competitive, gladiator-type competition,” he said. “That’s what people don’t get; it’s not about the government or censorship, it’s competing.”

IBM Restarts Talks on Low-End Server Business

IBM has restarted efforts to sell its low-end server business and is in talks with companies including Dell and Lenovo, two people briefed on the process said Monday.

IBM was close to a deal to sell the unit to Lenovo last year, but talks between the companies broke down over price expectations, and the sale process was shelved. Lenovo was hoping to pay about $2.5 billion, while I.B.M. was hoping for at least $4 billion, these people said.

Talks have recently restarted, and Dell has expressed serious interest in the deal. Other bidders are also thought to be interested in the unit. But Lenovo, having taken a close look at the business last year, was thought to be leading, the people briefed on the matter said.

Talks between the companies could still fall apart, resulting in another failed sale process. It was not clear what price was being discussed this time around.
The unit includes IBM’s X86 server business and is estimated to have sales of about $5 billion a year. The company does not break out precise revenue for the division, which has lower margins than its software and services businesses.

A sale would be the latest step in IBM’s evolution from a dominant producer of hardware like computers and servers into a company focused on providing services to governments and businesses. IBM has already shed its personal computer and printer units, though it still makes high-end servers.

For Dell, which was recently taken private by management and Silver Lake Partners, securing the low-end servers unit would be the first big move toward its promised transformation out of the public eye. Dell is aiming to reduce its reliance on personal computers and expand into services and software. Buying the server unit could help Dell generate additional cash as it continues that transition.

For China’s Lenovo, the world’s largest maker of personal computers, buying the server business could help it stem the decline of its core market, which is slowly eroding. Lenovo acquired IBM’s ThinkPad PC business in 2005 for $1.75 billion, establishing itself as the third-largest personal computer maker at the time. In recent years, Lenovo has begun making smartphones and tablets as well.

The Wall Street Journal reported Dell’s interest in the unit earlier.

Electra Partners to Take Majority Stake in British Shoemaker

LONDON - The British private equity firm Electra Partners said on Monday that one of its funds would take a majority stake in the British shoemaker Hotter Shoes.

The fund Electra Private Equity will purchase the stake from Gresham, another British private equity firm that focuses on investing in management buyouts.

The deal includes an equity investment of about 85 million pounds, or about $140 million, and the assumption of debt. The total value of the deal is about £200 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“We have been tracking Hotter Shoes for several years and it epitomizes what we look for in a buyout investment - a really strong U.K. headquartered business with not only a U.K. growth story but also proven international potential,” said Alex Fortescue, chief investment partner at Electra Partners.

Stewart Houlgrave, the founder of Hotter Shoes, is expected to retain a significant stake in the company and will stay involved in the business. The Hotter Shoes management team will continue to be led by Peter Taylor, its chief executive.

“Electra Partners’ support will be key in enabling the business to expand into new markets and grow its customer base, while at the same time continuing to meet the needs of its existing customers,” Mr. Houlgrave said.

Founded in 1959 as a slipper maker, Hotter Shoes sells more than two million pairs of shoes a year, focusing on stylish but comfortable footwear. Based in Lancashire in northwest England, Hotter Shoes operates 54 stand-alone stores and sells its shoes through more than 200 retailers.

Gresham first invested in Hotter Shoes in 2007 through a management buyout. Since then, the shoemaker has expanded its international reach, including expanding its presence in the United States.

The Lloyds Banking Group and HSBC provided debt facilities for the transaction. Hotter Shoes’ management was advised by Rothschild and Ernst & Young.

Deutsche Bank Warns of ‘Challenges’

FRANKFURT â€" Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank, said it lost nearly 1 billion euros in the fourth quarter of 2013, more than expected, and warned of a difficult year ahead after revenue from investment banking declined and the bank absorbed further costs from legal problems.

“We expect 2014 to be a year of further challenges,” Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen, co-chief executives of Deutsche Bank, said in a statement Sunday night. Despite the loss equivalent to $1.35 billion, the bank still expected to achieve targets it set for 2015, they said.

Deutsche Bank shares had fallen 4 percent by midday, pulling other banking stocks down with them. Barclays was 3.6 percent lowerwhile HSBC fell 4 percent on the London Stock Exchange.

Releasing earnings ahead of schedule, the bank said that net loss in the quarter was €965 million after revenue declined 16 percent to €6.6 billion, largely because of a slump in bond and currency trading. The loss was narrower than the €2.5 billion loss Deutsche Bank reported in the fourth quarter of 2012, but more than analysts had forecast.

Like rivals including JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank faces lawsuits and official investigations stemming from charges of misconduct, primarily in the years leading up to the financial crisis. The bank booked a €528 million loss during the quarter for litigation costs, bringing the total for the year to €2.45 billion.

But Deutsche Bank also seems to be having more trouble than its peers in the United States maintaining revenue and profit. Deutsche Bank suffered a 31 percent drop in sales from bond trading and other fixed income securities, compared with an 8 percent drop for American banks, said Jon Peace, an analyst at Nomura, in a note to clients on Monday. The prospect of higher interest rates, as well as strong performance by stocks, prompted many investors to reduce their bond holdings.

The bank said its loss before taxes in the fourth quarter was €1.15 billion, down from a loss of €3.17 billion in the same period a year earlier. For the full year, Deutsche Bank reported a profit of €1.1 billion, up from €315 million in 2012.

Deutsch Bank agreed to pay $1.9 billion in December to settle claims that it had defrauded two government-controlled companies in the sale of mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis. In addition, the European Union antitrust authorities fined the bank €725 million for its role in helping to rig benchmark interest rates.

Correction: January 20, 2014

An earlier version of this article described Deutsche Bank’s earnings incorrectly. The bank had a net loss, not a net profit. The article also omitted the name of Jürgen Fitschen, co-chief executive of Deutsche Bank, in a quote attributed to Anshu Jain, co-chief executive. It was a joint statement.

British Financial Services Sector Optimistic, Survey Finds

LONDON - Financial services firms in Britain are increasingly optimistic about the business environment heading into the first quarter and are prepared to add as many as 15,000 new jobs in the quarter, according to a survey released on Monday.

Of the 87 banks, asset managers and insurance companies surveyed, 69 percent said they felt more optimistic about the business environment, the highest level since 1989 when the auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Confederation of British Industry began the quarterly survey.

“As the recovery takes root in the wider economy, it is beginning to feed through to financial services firms,” said Matthew Fell, the confederation’s director for competitive markets. “Things are starting to look more ‘normal’ after five years of volatility.”

Financial services companies in Britain hired at their fastest pace since 2007 in the fourth quarter, adding 10,000 jobs. The companies expected to add another 15,000 jobs in the first quarter of this year, the survey found, meaning about 1.16 million people would be employed in the sector in Britain. That compares with about 1.21 million people working in the sector during the fourth quarter of 2008, shortly after the financial crisis began.

Bankers appeared to be particularly optimistic and to be coming to terms with the more intense regulatory scrutiny after the financial crisis.

“The survey suggests that the sector is also beginning to get to grips with its regulatory agenda,” said Kevin Burrowes, the leader of the PricewaterhouseCoopers financial services team in Britain. “Regulation is seen as a lesser obstacle to growth than before and regulatory spending is growing more slowly. There is no question that compliance remains a major concern, but it is slightly less all-consuming than it was.”

Experience complying with regulations, Mr. Burrowes said, was one of the most sought-after skills for financial professionals in London.

AB InBev to Repurchase South Korean Brewer For $5.8 Billion

LONDON - Anheuser-Busch InBev said Monday that it would repurchase Oriental Brewery in a deal valued at $5.8 billion nearly five years after it sold the South Korean brewer to the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

The deal expands AB InBev’s international footprint and marks its return to the fast-growing Asia Pacific region, a market it largely abandoned following the Oriental Brewery sale in July 2009.

The brewery was sold to K.K.R. for $1.8 billion in cash and debt as AB InBev engaged in a series of asset sales to reduce its debt following a 2008 merger that created the world’s largest beer maker. Shortly after the purchase, K.K.R. sold half of the company to Affinity Equity Partners, a buyout firm specializing in investments in the Asia-Pacific region.

The deal comes just a week after Suntory of Japan agreed to pay $13.6 billion to buy Beam Inc., the maker of Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark whiskeys.

Oriental Brewery “will strengthen our position in the fast-growing Asia Pacific region and will become a significant contributor to our Asia Pacific Zone,” Carlos Brito, the AB InBev chief executive, said.

AB InBev had an option under the terms of the original sale to reacquire Oriental Brewery by July 2014.

The deal is subject to regulatory approval in South Korea and is expected to close in the first half of 2014.

Oriental Brewery is the largest South Korean brewer and had an exclusive license to distribute AB InBev brands, including Budweiser and Corona, in South Korea.

“The success experienced since 2009 is a testament to all the employees of OB, and we are gratified to have invested in the company and supported the company’s growth as well as their environmental and citizenship initiatives,” Joseph Y. Bae, managing partner of K.K.R. Asia, and Kok Yew Tang, Affinity’s chairman and managing partner, said in a statement.

Beer sales in South Korea are expected to grow by more than 13 percent from 2012 to 2022, the companies said.

Oriental Brewery will continue to be led by its chief executive, In-soo Chang, following the deal.

Lazard and Deutsche Bank served as advisers to AB InBev.

Blinkx Founder to Join Venture Firm Balderton Capital

LONDON - Suranga Chandratillake, the founder of the British Internet media company Blinkx, is joining the European venture capital firm Balderton Capital.

Mr. Chandratillake, 36, will return to London from Silicon Valley and serve as a general partner at the venture capital firm, leading early-stage investments in the online media and technology sectors.

“As the architect of one of the U.K.’s most successful internet technology companies, Suranga will be a great addition to our team as well as an invaluable mentor to the companies in our portfolio,” said Bernard Liautaud, a general partner of Balderton Capital. “He understands what it takes to create global and long-lasting businesses and can draw from his own experiences to support the founders we back.”

Blinkx, a search engine for Internet video and audio, was founded in 2004 and was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2007.

Mr. Chandratillake will remain a board member of Blinkx and continue to serve as the company’s chief strategy officer.

“Balderton is a natural fit for me,” Mr. Chandratillake said. “They are a smart, lean and driven team that makes high-impact decisions and has the flexibility of thought and action that fast-growing technology companies need from their partners.”