Belgian Brewer to Buy Anheuser-Busch
By AOIFE WHITE and CHRISTOPHER LEONARD,AP
Posted: 2008-07-14 13:58:08
BRUSSELS, Belgium (July 14) - The maker of the King of Beers has agreed to go to work for the Belgian brewer InBev SA.


Deal to Create World's Largest BrewerDirk Waem, AFP / Getty ImagesAfter several months of persistence from Belgium's InBev, Budweiser maker Anheuser-Busch agrees to be acquired for $52 billion in a deal that will create the world's largest brewer. The company will operate under the name Anheuser-Busch InBev. Also See: Surprise! American Icons That Aren't American
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Anheuser-Busch Cos. said early Monday it had agreed to a sweetened $52 billion takeover bid from InBev, creating the world's largest brewer and heading off what was shaping up as an acrimonious fight for the maker of Budweiser and Bud Light beers. InBev brands include Stella Artois, Beck's and Bass.

The combined company will be called Anheuser-Busch InBev. As of the end of last week, InBev said it would be the world's third-largest consumer products company by market capitalization after Procter & Gamble of the United States and Nestle SA of Switzerland.

The Anheuser-Busch board accepted the higher takeover offer Sunday night from Belgian-based InBev, according to a joint press release. The deal is expected to close by year-end.

"What consumers care is that their Bud will always be their Bud, and that's what we're committed to, not only the product, the quality, the beer ... but also the heritage, the breweries, who brews the beers, and everything that's connected to the breweries," InBev CEO Carlos Brito said in a media conference call.

For InBev, the deal gives an aggressive company an iconic beer brand - Budweiser - to sell into emerging markets such as China and Brazil where it has already established a wide network.

InBev is the world's second-largest beer-maker, narrowly behind SABMiller. Swallowing Anheuser-Busch sees it leap ahead, capturing half of the U.S. beer market and a fifth of China and Russia.

Brito will be chief executive officer of the combined company, while Anheuser-Busch CEO August Busch IV will step back into a non-executive role. He will be a member of the new company's board alongside one other nominee from Anheuser-Busch, yet to be named.

"We went through some difficult times together, and our employees did as well, but in the end this is a friendly transaction and we are going to work very hard for our new shareholders," Busch told reporters.

Shareholders will receive $70 a share, a $5 increase over the offer Anheuser-Busch rejected in June. Both companies' shareholders must approve the deal, as must U.S. and EU antitrust regulators.

Anheuser-Busch shares rose 50 cents to $67 in afternoon trading after rising to a 52-week high of $67.55.

The deal drew the attention of Mexico's Grupo Modelo. Anheuser-Busch also owns a 50 percent share in Grupo Modelo, which said in a statement Monday that its relationship with Anheuser-Busch gives it consent rights to the deal.

But Brito told reporters that he didn't "see any impediments coming from Modelo" and he was in "positive" talks about keeping the company as a partner. He said there were no immediate plans to buy out Modelo or divest Anheuser-Busch's stake in the company.

InBev said it plans to use St. Louis as its North American headquarters, and that it will keep open all 12 of Anheuser-Busch's North American breweries.

Brito tried to reassure workers worried about possible job loses, saying the company could instead expect "growth and investment" despite Anheuser-Busch's existing plans to shed 1,185 positions - mostly by offering early retirement and not filling existing vacancies.

The companies will, however, sell off "noncore assets" that they would not name to raise some $7 billion to finance the deal. InBev will also borrow $45 billion and plans to issue new shares to raise another $9.8 billion.

Shareholders won't see much joy in the short-term. InBev warned of lower dividends and no benefit to earnings per share until 2010.

But it is promising longer-term rewards in a stalling market. Beer sales in North America and Europe are flat as drinkers turn to wine and spirits. InBev has compensated by finding new drinkers in Latin America, eastern Europe and Asia that will now be handed a cold Bud.

InBev cost synergies of at least $1.5 billion a year by 2011 over three years. Most of that will come from managing the supply chain better. InBev's sharp eye on costs - which forces managers to justify every cent spent - will also play a major part.

Monday's kiss-and-make-up announcement from both companies came after several weeks of guns blazing. InBev said on June 11 it wanted to buy Anheuser-Busch, which distributes its beers in the U.S.

Anheuser-Busch shrugged off the first offer as two low, prompting InBev to seek the removal of all Anheuser's board members. Anheuser counterattacked, calling InBev's bid an "illegal scheme" because the company failed to mention that it owned a brewery in Cuba.

Few products are associated with America as much as Budweiser, which its owner calls the King of Beers. Its Clydesdale horses are fixtures of Super Bowl ads, and even the label is red, white and blue, with an eagle swooping through the "A."

To some in St. Louis, losing Anheuser-Busch to a foreign buyer meant losing a little bit of history. From college buildings to theme parks to offices to the stadium where the Cardinals play baseball, the Busch name is virtually everywhere in the Gateway City.

Despite more than 600 years of brewing beer in Belgium, InBev is more rootless. Although based in Leuven, Belgium, it is run by a Brazilian management team and sells most of its beer outside Europe.

It owns a massive portfolio of local brands from Siberia to Argentina that rarely travel. InBev has only recently started to push its two best-known brands - Stella Artois and Beck's - more widely.

Bush Gardens in Tampa just raised their prices as did Sea World and Aquadica and Adventure Island.......

AT LEAST THEY GIVE THE WHOLE YEAR FREE.
UNIVERSAL GIVES THE BEST DEAL..

DISNEY WON'T SEE ME FOR A LOOOONG TIME , CREEPY CREEPY CREEPY.

Jose, Lupo, people up here can't even afford to do their LAUNDRY anymore...click on the links in my new thread, "Scarier..."

PAULA, THAT'S WHEN PEOPLE START HITTING THE BOTTLE...GOOD FOR THEM....MIGHT AS WELL...LOL



"LOVE ON THE ROCKS
AIN'T NO SURPRISE,
JUST POOR ME A DRINK
AND I'LL TELL YOU SOME LIES".

I'll drink to that!!
Who would have imagined paying for water!!!

quote:

Originally posted by LUPO:
PAULA, THAT'S WHEN PEOPLE START HITTING THE BOTTLE...GOOD FOR THEM....MIGHT AS WELL...LOL

What does that mean? Oh, wait...things are getting so bad, we're all going to need a few drinks to get through the days ahead? Is that it? I wonder if government food assistance pays for vodka??? AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!

Lupo, do you think it makes good sense to make English the official language of the U.S. when you might have to speak French or Dutch-Flemish to get a job at Anheuser-Busch?

My Budweiser boycott has begun...this lad is drinking good ole Rolling Rock! 2000 posts!

quote:

Originally posted by Easy:
Lupo, do you think it makes good sense to make English the official language of the U.S. when you might have to speak French or Dutch-Flemish to get a job at Anheuser-Busch?

IT'D BE EASIER IF THEY BOTH SPOKE SPANISH. EVERYONE ELSE IN AMERICA DOES...LOL
BUT YA, MAKE IT OFFICIAL, ENGLISH SOUNDS GOOD TO ME...

It don't mean a thing if you'll have to speak Chinese to get a job in the back of one of their restaurants. People who don't learn English hurt themselves a lot more than they inconvenience us. If we bring our well-paying jobs back from China and India, a lot of people will learn English to qualify for them. When I was a kid many shops had signs in the window in the native languages--Spanish spoken here and Italian and Yiddish and Greek, etc. Your parents and grandparents had no problem with those signs. They welcomed them. They thought highly of the storekeepers for being so considerate. Press 1 for English is just an updated version of the same thing. Good night Lupo, time for lullabies and night lights.

I dont' think the language barrier is the problem in America anymore. It's the greedy corporations who need to bring our Unions and jobs back home, and hire Americans first .
Where are our leaders? Anyone on Capital Hill fighting for America anymore?

Getting back to the theme of the article about foreign interests buying an American icon, there is nothing new in this. Also, American companies and individuals have been buying the icons as well as ordinary businesses of other countries for over a century now. Why is one of London's bridges at Lake Havasu? Time-Life bought up German, Austrian, and Italian publishing houses for a song after WWII. This is the way it is. In this climate of globalization, which I'm NOT in support of, you can expect much more of this.

Globalization does not just hurt ordinary Americans. It is designed to hurt all ordinary people throughout the world.

Stuart

Stuart is quite right. Corporations have no conscience and no sense of national pride. When the yen was strong against the dollar several years ago, Japanese bought up several prestigious American hotels and even Rockefeller Center, home of Radio City Music Hall. I know several Americans whose pride was hurt by this, but the sellers were happy as pigs in...

When America joined in the boycott of South Africa in protest of their apartheid policies, corporations who did business there did not do handflips. While America was fighting the Nazis during WW2, some American corporations continued to do business with them, even taking advantage of the availability of slave labor.

On a guess I would say that if the Nazis had privatized the death camps, plenty of corporations would have found the prospect of making money off the hair and dental fillings of exterminated prisoners quite attractive.

This is the result of capitalism. Capitalism is an economic theory, just as Marxism is. They are are not always correct as they are not always wrong.

quote:

Originally posted by AGNAR:
This is the result of capitalism. Capitalism is an economic theory, just as Marxism is. They are are not always correct as they are not always wrong.

Absolutely! Capitalism's weak link is GREED. Once that starts, individuals become invisible and only the almighty $$ counts. Sad commentary on human nature, even sadder on the state of our world today...

So, for all the witch-hunters out there searching for communists, marxists, socialists, oh my! look to your own country and see what it has devolved to. Anything in 'theory' sounds good. But when it starts breaking down, as the all-American, exalted "capitalism" is now, it is no longer working, and no longer viable.

quote:

Originally posted by Easy:
On a guess I would say that if the Nazis had privatized the death camps, plenty of corporations would have found the prospect of making money off the hair and dental fillings of exterminated prisoners quite attractive.

So, what are we in the end? "Human" or beneath-bestial? Any "corporation" that values $$$ over people is already sick with cancer...

quote:

Originally posted by Mike McWatt:
My Budweiser boycott has begun...this lad is drinking good ole Rolling Rock!

Guess who one of the biggest stockholders is? It's Cindy McCain.