Beereaucracy

By on July 14, 2008 @ 7 PM (No Comments)

It’s time for the craft beer SATs here at The BeerFathers! Read the following list and tell us which one of these things doesn’t logically belong:

  • Bass
  • Beck’s
  • Boddingtons
  • Budweiser
  • Franziskaner
  • Hoegaarden
  • Lowenbrau
  • Spaten
  • St. Pauli Girl
  • Stella Artois

If you guessed Budweiser, you are correct.

In the “huh?” deal of the year, Anheuser-Busch and InBev (maker of many of the fine brands listed above) officially reached an agreement to combine the two companies. The new name will be Anheuser-Busch InBev, apparently because they decided not to involve the marketing department or any creative people in the naming process. The quick details:

  • The deal obviously still needs shareholder and regulatory approval
  • AB shareholders will get $70 per share in cash
  • The combined equity value of the new entity will be $52 billion based on the share price above ($36.4 billion in actual revenue in 2007 combined)
  • They will be the largest beer company in the world
  • They will be one of the world’s five largest consumer products companies (Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson are now “peers”)
  • St. Louis will be the North American headquarters
  • They won’t close any US breweries

Read the full 8 page press release here. There’s been some talk in the beer community about the deal and what it means but for the most part we don’t care too much – the stuff we drink will mostly be unaffected. See some of my fellow beer bloggers:

Of course it would be short sided to say it won’t have any affect at all – they will have a ton of power and could go on a craft brewery buying binge, Supermarket Sweep style, if they so desired. To say it can’t have an affect would be like a mom and pop store saying “We’re not worried about Wal-Mart” or my local coffee shop (this actually happened) saying “We’re not worried about Starbucks.” Time will tell, but for now I’m going to try to get my head around the fact that my beloved Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse Dunkel will essentially be an AB beer.


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