Anheuser-Busch shareholders approve InBev buyout
Anheuser-Busch shareholders voted today to accept Belgian brewer InBev’s $52 billion buyout of the St. Louis-based company. Anheuser-Busch officials announced the results of the voting at 11:25 a.m. CST during its shareholdering meeting at a hotel in Secaucus, N.J., a few miles from Manhattan.
Owners of more than two-thirds of Anheuser-Busch stock voted for the deal. The 497 million shares cast in favor amounted to 96 percent of all votes cast, which Anheuser-Busch acclaimed as a strong endorsement. Some shareholders abstained from voting.
Coming after Anheuser-Busch’s board unanimously recommended the $70-per-share offer, the vote was expected to be a formality on the way to completing one of the largest corporate takeovers in history. The deal still awaits regulatory approval in China, the U.K. and the U.S.
Weighing the offer and eventually deciding to support the deal “was a very difficult decision for any board to make,” chief executive August A. Busch IV told the crowd of 150 shareholders. “It was discussed and debated extensively.”
In the end, Anheuser-Busch’s board judged that a tie-up with InBev would be the best option for shareholders, and would lead to a “promising future” for the brewer, Busch said.
Sending Budweiser onto an even more global stage — one of InBev’s stated goals — fulfills “the global ambitions of my family,” Busch said. “We are about to sell more beer, to more people, in more countries than any other company in the history of brewing beer.”
When the deal is finalized — expected to happen before the end of the year — Anheuser-Busch’s reign as the biggest independent American brewer will end. The company traces its history as an independent company back five generations, all the way to 1852. That was before the Civil War. This was presumably the final shareholders meeting for the St. Louis-based company, one of the city’s largest employers and one of its best-recognized symbols.
“A bittersweet day,” Busch IV told a reporter as he walked off the stage after the 25-minute meeting.
Several shareholders from New Jersey agreed with him. So, apparently, did Patrick Stokes, the company’s chairman, who shared the stage with Busch.
“I think it’s sad” when a company with as much heritage as Anheuser-Busch loses its independent status, he said. Surrounded by investors and journalists, Stokes spoke briefly in the lobby of the hotel.
“The board of directors represented the shareholders’ interests very well,” said Stokes. “The board of directors is there for the interests of shareholders.”
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Jeremiah McWilliams is a native Virginian who came to the Post-Dispatch in early 2007 to cover beer and other consumer products. He previously covered manufacturing for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk, Va. He is a graduate of Washington and Lee University. 
stokes and co. should share there wealth from this sale with the whole employee lot…. note to obama, spread the wealth by making it law that the top person in a co. can only get 3 times the amount that the lowest paid person gets when a company is sold.( lowest gets 0 then the top gets 000… not possiable? check out what Germanys upper managment gets in pay and compensation vs. the lowest paid person.
Good comments by uummm. What everybody needs to know is that Brito is not the bad guy here. This can fall squarely at the feet of August III. He continued to run this “public” company as a family business and created a huge amount of overhead and waste throughout the organization. His lame attempts at globalizing the company were weak at best. There is a big world outside STL and we are seeing it now. Luckily companies like Emerson and Monsanto see it and are thriving.
I feel for those losing their jobs but even more so about what they will have to do in the “real world.” The level of benefits and perks they ahve received are not what normal, well run companies do anymore. We can complain about it but that is the way it is.
That proves just how sad a society we live in. I can’t believe that 95% would sell their souls to the devil.
Here’s hoping that rumor was true: that the InBev deal might not go through because of the financial crisis, they might not be able to get financing.
Well this is the second time is a week my vote was on the losing end.
Now it is time to drink Lemp or Schafley. Up yours In-Bev!
You gotta keep drinkin’ the BUD folks. While none of us in STL like the transaction very much, we can make it more palatable if we continue to support the brand. This will support the folks in our town and this is good. Not buying AB brands is only going to punish the employees and the suppliers (who are mostly local)to AB and their employees. We can do everyone a favor if we run out today or tomorrow and buy 2 cases of AB beer. You’ll drink it.
O.K. a few short years Miller Brewing was sold to SAB now it’s MillerCoors.
All we heard was Miller is no longer an American Co. Well how do you big Bud boy feel now?
Little Auggie and daddy Auggie are laughing all the way to the bank. Well St. Louis all I have to say now IT’S MILLER TIME. Go out and show the Busch Family what you really think drink a Miller or Coor beer.
Daniel, what would you do if you were a mutual fund manager? Your fund is down 30% and by selling A-B your fund is now only down 20%… compared to others, you look like a genius… If you own A-B stock, how did you vote? Do you have money it a mutual fund and let your fund manager vote your shares for you? A-B used to be a steady-growth stock but when it because a no-growth stock, due to out of control spending (marketing) and no interest in acquiring other breweries, it was pretty much over. Coming out with fruit flavored brews and skin water, just doesn’t cut it. It been a long time coming. Thanks August III, this Becks for you !
This deal was sealed by the big financial companies and giant pension funds that need cash. Those of us individual investors can’t stand up to the millions of shares these funds own, and our interests were lost in the stampede. So when it all falls apart under InBev’s mania for cutting costs regardless of what it does to quality, don’t blame me. I voted my few hundred shares “No”.
After the board agreed to sell to InBev over the summer, everyone jumped online here and vowed “to never drink A-B products again”. And guess what happened? A-B had strong 3Q sales, actually seeing an increase in sales in a tough year. And now people are on here again, vowing to never drink their products again. The reality is, that outside St. Louis, for the most part, no one cares who owns Anheuser-Busch. We can be upset all we want because of our hometown pride, but honestly, people across the country aren’t going to stop drinking Budweiser or Bud Light. If people take off their blinders, they would see that the company wasted millions of dollars every year, and had every opportunity to deliver more shareholder value, but did not. And therefore did not protect itself. You can’t blame InBev for making a strategic business decision. So what does boycotting A-B products even do? Run them out of business? That’ll show ‘em! Damn them for cutting jobs. I’ll run them out of business so EVERYBODY can lose their job! It’s completely counter-productive.
The two US banks participating in the InBev loan syndication and who are also getting US govt injections (bailout money) are JP Morgan and Bank of America. The two of them are getting a total of $40 billion (according to CNN Money website, JP Morgan gets $25 billion and Bank of America gets $15 billion.) Nice.