  The LHCb collaboration has recently performed a first measurement of the
angular production asymmetry in the distribution of beauty quarks and
anti-quarks at a hadron collider. We calculate the corresponding standard model
prediction for this asymmetry at fixed-order in perturbation theory. Our
results show good agreement with the data, which is provided differentially for
three bins in the invariant mass of the $b \bar b$ system. We also present
similar predictions for both beauty-quark and charm-quark final states within
the LHCb acceptance for a collision energy of $\sqrt{s} = 13 \, {\rm TeV}$. We
finally point out that a measurement of the ratio of the $b \bar b$ and $c \bar
c$ cross sections may be useful for experimentally validating charm-tagging
efficiencies.
