I am impressed that you are all taking the gloom and doom approach and have A-B packing up and selling. Maybe this is what the problem is in St. Louis, no support from its people.
Lets have a little hope and think that August IV will do the right move with the board and not be remebered as the last Busch that sold the company

After the news broke, shares of A-B rose 6% and shares of inBev dropped 3%. To give an idea of what the market thinks about the deal…

If this is true I guess I will be finding a new ”AMERICAN” beer to drink, Shame on A-B for not coming out against this. I’ll bet all the good paying jobs for the factory workers are on the line if the sale goes through.

Let’s be clear, it isn’t up to Busch IV. It will be up to the Board which isn’t made up of Gussie’s buddies anymore. There are sixteen members of the board. Ten of them are not from St. Louis. These folks, thanks to Sarbannes Oxley, have only one oblgation and that is to make the best decision for all the shareholders. The fate of St. Louis will not even be a factor. Oh, and one of those directors is Ed Whiteacre, the guy who moved SBC to Texas after the legend says they wouldn’t let him into St. Louis Country Club, (I do not know if this is really true). The board, who won’t want to get sued, will form a special committee of independent directors (non-management) hire Goldman Sachs, or some bg bank to evaluate the deal and they will vote based only on that opinion, because that protects them from litigation. The board can hold out, but in the end, the suitor can always file a proxy and go directly to the shareholders, most of whom don’t live here either. Ten funds own almost thirty percent of the company, according to Yahoo Finance. If the buyer convinces them, they only need 20 more percent to get to 51% which is all you need.

A-B being bought our would devastate St. Louis’s economy. The number of cuts and lay offs InBev would make would make A-B a small player in a town it used to be the King of…the last great american brewer and st. louis could be dead.

Dont listen to anyone who works for InBev about the cost cuttting and fat-cutting that occurs. No matter what you hear - it happens far mor and deeper than you can imagine. If you want an example - look at Labatt in Canada. InBev came in and kept the local HQ in Toronto - but cut a lot of jobs. People up there are now working with departments of 3 instead of 20 because fewer people were needed on the ground.

The only thing most of us can do is wait and see. I’ve heard these rumors before and it won’t be the last. Chances are they are true, but nothing has been anounced either way by either company. Sources were not named, so whose to say that the rumor wasn’t started by someone wanting to sell their A-B stock? Yes it might be a bad thing. I would imagine that the fat would be cut from the work force but I believe that Budweiser will be brewed in St.Louis, Mo in another 150 years. InBev needs the production to keep rolling or what good is it to buy a company and then shut off it’s biggest artery? Be patient, the sky is not falling yet. Besides it could mean bigger and better things for everyone involed.

it is clear that the 18 month inbev takeover rumors are true. david nicklaus’ sunday PD article was succinct & on target, but the article merely summarized what many already knew & feared. i have friends at a-b who are shaken in their boots about what this would mean. to me, vast layoffs and job consolidations would result across all sectors. 50% of the corporate workforce could be eliminated and no one would bat an eye. the fact that august IV & III have said nothing is an ominous sign. the busches are defenseless to stop inbev if inbev makes an offer. no shareholder seeking stock value would vote against inbev’s takeover. it would take a lifetime for current management to take this once proud company to $65 per share. inbev could do it overnight. a-b’s stock has languished in the $40’s for much of the last decade. i feel for my friends who face uncertainty, but for me, a small shareholder, it is good news.

I work for A-B, blue collar, my take is that this will probably happen within a year or so. But I don’t see it affecting St. Louis, the brewery will still be here, the HQ will still be here. In Bev needs A/B it’s products, it’s status in the U.S. market, and it’s network of distributors in tack in order to make this venture successful. Any drastic change in marketing approach or production of the product would be detrimental to the sales of current domestic beers, and introduction of imports with any hope of significant sales nearly impossible. Thats just the way I see it.
One question I do have, is if this goes through would it be ALL of A/B, I mean the Entertainment Divisions, Can production Divisions, etc. I don’t see In Bev wanting these other divisions, they are strictly beverage. Anyone have any ideas??

Buyers create what is called an accretion/dilution model of life after the acquisition. If they determine the business is worth more cut into parts, they will plan to spin-off the pieces that don’t contribute to the core business. Often, a business is worth more in pieces than together. This is more than a rumor. It was the lead story on the front page of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. They don’t give baseless rumors that kind of space.

The real victims will be the rank and file and the City of St. Louis. The ironinc part of this is the funds that often push the hardest for business combinations are the pension funds that represent the most liberal constituencies, e.g. teacher’s pension funds, state and municipal pension funds, etc. These funds have been on a decade long campaign against excessive executive compensation and what they feel is corporate waste in order to get the stock prices (and their funds) higher. The ironic part is these efforts at corporate streamlining (layoffs) and mergers is that they hurt the little guy these funds represent. One man’s corporate waste is another man’s civic donation. Trust me, the shareholders don’t care about the City Schools, or if the MSD tax increase passes. All they care about is how high they can get the stock price. So, all that AB stuff you’ve been getting for your church auction, every time the brewery has bailed out some local problem…I wouldn’t count on it if this happens.