©Photo by Jerry Naunheim Jr.

InBev completed the purchase of Anheuser-Busch last week, paying shareholders $70 per share of stock — a tidy sum and a handsome premium. The iconic Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, Missouri, now is a subsidiary of a company called Anheuser-Bush InBev NV/SA, Leuven, Belgium.

We wish the new enterprise all good success. “By bringing together these two great businesses, we have created a stronger, more competitive global company,” Carlos Brito, the company’s chief executive, said.

Let’s hope that’s true. How the combination fares will have a significant impact on the fortunes of other businesses and on the quality of life of many people in our region and around the country.

The corporate finance magazine Financial Week aptly signaled the acquisition’s completion with this headline: “Clock now ticking on InBev’s Budweiser debt.”

Indeed, much of the $52 billion purchase price was borrowed, and huge amounts of money must be repaid on tight deadlines at a time of tight credit and an unstable world economy. (In the next 12 months alone, $17 billion will come due.)

The new company’s plan for meeting such obligations includes selling some corporate assets. A-B’s theme parks and its packaging group have been mentioned as possible candidates.

Profitability also is said to depend on aggressive cost-cutting through a combination of downsizing, outsourcing and squeezing even more productivity out of the employees who remain. The process began months ago and recently was punctuated by the early retirement of nearly 1,000 Anheuser-Busch employees nationwide days before the sale closed.

Presumably, the new company also plans to sell a lot of beer. Best of luck with that, too.

Close to the home of the choicest product of the brewer’s art, our perspective is a bit different, a bit more personal. As St. Louisans who always feel a little prideful thrill when we hear the commercial tagline “Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, Missouri,” we hold fast to the conviction that there’s a direct connection between success in the beer marketplace and the skills, talents and dedication of our neighbors and friends who work for what everyone simply calls the brewery.

Olympia Brewing Company, formerly of Tumwater, Wash., and now defunct, used this famous slogan for its flagship beer: “It’s the water.”

What is it with Anheuser-Busch products?

It’s not the brilliant marketing, including ubiquitous sports sponsorships, or the larger-than-life Busch family members who led the company over five generations. It’s not the famous spit-polish brewery tours at Pestalozzi Street or the magnificent Clydesdales or summer visits to Grant’s Farm or even generous corporate philanthropy — although these are very good things.

Nor are we persuaded — speaking of marketing — that it has much to do with “exclusive Beechwood Aging” that “produces a taste, a smoothness and a drinkability you will find in no other beer at any price” — whatever “drinkability” is.

It’s not the water, either, and, when you come down to it, it doesn’t have all that much to do with beer.

Consumers, after all, have many choices when it comes to beer.

Rather, it’s the people who work for Anheuser-Busch who have made the company and its products what they are.

Want a community project to accomplish something? Make sure you have someone from the A-B family on your team.

Go to any local parish or public school, peewee sports league, garden club, literacy group, food drive, student science fair, school auction, charity raffle or Girl Scout Cookie sale in any part of the metropolitan region — or just about any other kind of volunteer, non-profit, civic improvement enterprise you can think of, for that matter — and chances are you will find one or more Anheuser-Busch employees pitching in, carrying a substantial part of the load, leading.

These folks don’t identify themselves by the industry of which they are part or by the kind of job they do.

They say they work at the brewery. We know what that means.

It means that they work for Anheuser-Busch — whether as electricians, plumbers, pipe fitters, Teamsters, brewers, engineers, clerks, accountants, planners, marketers, executives of all sorts. It means that they understand work and that they know that doing their job means meeting a clear standard of quality performance that has become all too rare in any field.

In the wake of the InBev takeover, a lot of A-B families are worried. Those of us who know members of families of the A-B family — and that’s most people in this community — sense and share their concern. We will know what happens to them.

Among the many memorable mottos of Anheuser-Busch is this one: “Making friends is our business.” In this town especially, the company has sold beer by making friends.

We look forward to Anheuser-Busch InBev NV/SA making friends in St. Louis. The surest way to do that is for the new company to take care of its people.

PHOTO BY KEVIN MANNING