The Financial Times‘ Alphaville blog has an interesting piece this morning about how Chinese regulators might be presenting an unfriendly face towards mergers and acquisitions. The reason? In approving Belgian brewer InBev’s buyout of St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, the Chinese commerce ministry imposed restrictions preventing InBev from acquiring further interests in four key companies in the Chinese beer market.

In the world’s biggest beer market and one of its largest economies, regulatory roadblocks to swinging deals could be worrisome for multinational businesses such as Anheuser-Busch InBev. But it remains to be seen how that will shake out.

From the FTAlphaville post:

The first published ruling by China’s new antitrust regime has triggered concern that authorities could use the laws to shield domestic industry from foreign competition. … Lawyers said that, by imposing future conditions on a deal that did not harm competition, [regulators] had broken new ground in international antitrust decision-making and thus, could alter the attitudes of overseas companies to M&A in China.