Of course it’s an alarming development. It’s likely to go down like this….

AB board members balk at initial offer. The secondary offer will include a massive multi-million dollar “bonus” for each of the board members for selling the company and making a profit for the share holders. All the people who work at AB that are struggling to pay the mortgage and put gas in their tanks will get nothing but rah rah speeches about how the two companies together will make a great team. Two years from now, all said employees will be let go. In a nutshell, it’s about the same thing that happened with May Company and A.G. Edwards. The execs for these companies make sure they have their golden parachute, then don’t care one way or another that the house burns down with the employees still inside.

65.00 dollars per share!! I would say that A-B is toast! No one is too big to be bought in todays world!

You could see this was going to happen. All the other Premium Beverage and Beer companies are buying up each other, and this is going to work its way to a monopoly. I completely agree with b. Eventually there will be a massive fallout from this and thousands of jobs will be lost in St. Louis alone!!! I say the 2 year time frame is a little too soon. I would think with a company the size of A-B, the firings will start from the bottom up and that process could take up to 5 years.

This is, frankly, terrible news. A-B is the only major brewery left in the US that’s not owned by non-US interests.

Losing A-B’s local ownership would be a huge blow to the entire metro area.

Agree with the initial poster. Signs of the times. Plus, as dee says, no one is exempt from takeovers anymore. Every big executive wants their golden parachute….at all costs.

Good luck to the average A&B worker……they’ll need it in order to not get ****ed.

I hope that if A-B does get bought out that it doesn’t completely pull the rug out from underneath St. Louis’ economy especially now in light of the country’s current economic woes. I know a handful of people who work for A-B, and I don’t want to see them go through lay-offs.

And to “b”… my mom got laid off in that A.G. Edwards buy-out and it devastated our lower middle-class family’s way of life for years. Lets hope something like that doesn’t happen here, though it does seem to be the trend…

The comparisons between this deal and other mergers that have negatively impacted our area are inevitable. But I really fail to see how there could be such a large fallout from a company that currently has minimal US presence. Inbev currently uses the AB distribution network, and would now be able to brew their beers at AB facilities in the US as a result of this merger. As for corporate staff here in STL, it isnt like we are being acquired by a company from Charlotte, Chicago, DC, etc. Again, they have only a small US presence (workforce wise) and you dont simply pick up a US company and move their corporate operations overseas. I predict this will have minimal impact on our area. Pride of not being able to say we are the world headquarters is probably it. We are still the US headquarters (just like Milwaukee for Miller) I would bet even the Bud commercials will always continue to say “St.Louis, MO” at the end.

As the victim of a merger, my advice to the employees and the public is never believe anything management says.

Perhaps it will be bought by a progressive european group who will add medical cannabis offerings to the deadly alcohol brews pitched by these drug pushers. Now if we could only get Seagram’s to do the same. These very peoples have caused much suffering by removing hemp from the US economy. Your clothes would last many years if made from hemp.
I laugh at those who vote republican when republican values and practices take companies to foreign ownership each year and make sure the good jobs are outsourced for temporary book cooking. Don’t forget, those who occupied the ill-fated towers sold you out and continue to do so. We have billions in bad paper that have to be paid back. American execs stole from foreigners. How sad we have come to this. Beer is largely unimportant. I feel sad that we still sell our miltitary technology to iffy countries. An enemy today brings the military-industrial complex big bucks tomorrow. Not patriotic at all!

The writings been on the wall folks. SAB-Miller, 60 countries, 6 continents. INBEV, 130 countries, 5 continents- world’s largest brewer. A-B didn’t,couldn’t get big enough fast enough globally. Miller-Coors now in the US very soon sharing brewing, marketing, transportation costs realizing 300 million a year in savings. This is a sign of the new world order. Mega breweries. One can only now speculate how many jobs will remain in STL but it’s a good bet many will be lost.