A marble and metal statue of an eagle looms in the lobby of Anheuser-Busch's St. Louis headquarters. The bird's wings are outstretched, its stare imperious, talons sunk deep into a fish plucked from the waves.

For years, the piece would have been a fitting metaphor for Anheuser-Busch's reign over the beer industry.

But the dominance of the King of Beers has slipped. Anheuser-Busch now finds itself on the wrong end of the hunt.

The country's biggest brewer is the quarry in a $47 billion-plus takeover bid from an even larger rival, InBev of Belgium. The emergence of bigger brewers — global competitors patched together through mergers and acquisitions — highlights an uncomfortable truth for St. Louis. In the face of a takeover threat and the cool arithmetic of global finance, the city's most iconic company may not control its destiny.

How did it come to this?

CHANGING GAME

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Anheuser-Busch poured most of its energy into locking up the U.S. market. It had been the biggest U.S. brewer since 1957, and executives were zealous to increase their lead in the world's richest beer market.

The strategy paid off. Profits rose steadily, and the company put smaller competitors in their places. A-B grabbed an average of 1.5 points of market share every year in the 1980s. Gains continued into this decade.

Anheuser-Busch's 25-year run of growing market share was "pretty phenomenal," said Benj Steinman, publisher and editor of trade publication Beer Marketer's Insights. "Everything was going swimmingly at the time."

But the game was changing. Competitors were surging into international markets to chase growth.

Brewers started to merge to muscle up, operate more efficiently and build bigger collections of brands. South African Breweries acquired Miller Brewing in 2002, Interbrew and AmBev teamed up in 2004, and Molson and Coors linked arms in 2005.

"There's really been nobody that's been left out of this party," Edward Jones analyst Jack Russo said.

Anheuser-Busch was the major exception. Its conservative philosophy often struck down potential deals before they got off the ground. Although it bought up stakes in Mexico and China, Anheuser-Busch largely worked alone, the vast bulk of its business coming from its U.S. breweries.

The giant didn't ink a monumental deal. As aggressive brewers bulked up to global status, they leap-frogged the King of Beers. InBev passed Anheuser-Busch by global market share in 2004; SABMiller followed a year later, according to Euromonitor International.

Anheuser-Busch's beer sales are now only about two-thirds the size of SABMiller's and InBev's, according to Fitch Ratings.

Anheuser-Busch's management team "got comfortable with the idea that they were the king of beers," said Morningstar analyst Ann Gilpin. She said previous executives started to accept the notion "that it was always going to be that way."

Whether Anheuser-Busch's approach was disciplined or timid — or a bit of both — is still up for debate.

The projections of growth in international beer markets were much less clear at the time than they appear with 20-20 hindsight, said Russo of Edwards Jones.

As they examined available buyout opportunities, Anheuser-Busch executives shied away from spending too much and diluting shareholder returns. Emerging markets such as Russia — now the world's No. 3 beer market — took a back seat.

Instead, Anheuser-Busch preferred to buy minority stakes in key foreign brewers and slowly build up its exposure to international markets.

Anheuser-Busch today "could be having some regrets," Russo said. But "at the time they were making these decisions, it looked like the right thing."

The company is still the biggest U.S. brewer, with about 48 percent of the market. Its operations spun out an average of $2.78 billion in cash in each of the past three years.

But as the beer business changed from the playing field of regional breweries into the domain of global networks, Anheuser-Busch's international presence has lagged behind. About 85 percent of its profits come from the U.S. beer business.

The challenges are daunting. The U.S. beer market is lackluster, and sales of Anheuser-Busch's mainstream beers — such as the Budweiser and Michelob lineups — are down. The company has added imported beers and energy drinks, crafted alliances with small breweries, beefed up media spending and signed hundreds of new hands to its field sales force. It plans to cut hundreds of millions in costs.

With some projections indicating that nearly all of the next decade's growth in beer consumption will be outside North America, Anheuser-Busch is trying to demonstrate that it can become a truly global brewer. Key to the plan: its stake in China, now the world's biggest beer market.

But analysts worry that the company already is boxed in, tied to a U.S. market that is no longer enough to satisfy Wall Street.

"They're not in a good position," said B. Craig Hutson, senior bond analyst at Gimme Credit.

BIGGER NOT BETTER

For the better part of a decade, Anheuser-Busch executives have insisted they are interested in acquisitions that would enhance the company's long-term growth. The company has spied out beer markets where the growth opportunities are greater than in the United States.

Executives insisted the company doesn't need to ink acquisitions simply for the sake of getting bigger. It has avoided acquisitions in "mature" markets.

The year 1993 may have been the high-water mark of Anheuser-Busch's international dealmaking.

In 1993, it bought into Grupo Modelo; thanks to that investment, Anheuser-Busch now owns half of Mexico's biggest brewer, maker of Corona.

Modelo pays Anheuser-Busch about $400 million in dividends every year; the company's investment of $1.6 billion is now worth $11 billion.

The deal has been "a home run" for Anheuser-Busch, said Steinman of Beer Marketer's Insights.

That same year, Anheuser-Busch entered China by purchasing a small stake in Tsingtao, a leading Chinese brewer. Anheuser-Busch now owns 27 percent of Tsingtao, China's No. 2 brewer.

In 2004, Anheuser-Busch decided to play with big money, buying the 13 breweries and well-known brands of the Harbin Brewery Group for $720 million. Anheuser-Busch outbid and outmaneuvered arch rival SABMiller in the process of inking one of the richest deals in the Chinese beer industry's history.

But that deal was the exception rather than the rule.

Back in 1999, Anheuser-Busch had designs on Brazil and the broader South American beer market. The company had a minority stake in Antarctica Paulista, Brazil's No. 2 brewer, and hoped to take majority control. It was not be.

Brahma, Brazil's biggest beermaker, convinced governing authorities to let it merge with Antarctica, forming a new company called AmBev. Anheuser-Busch sold its stake, and ended up without a path or strategy in Brazil. AmBev later merged with Belgian brewer Interbrew to become InBev.

In 2001, Anheuser-Busch was interested in the German brewer of Beck's beer.

No again. Interbrew, orchestrating a two-decade rise to the top of the industry, swooped in with $1.6 billion in hand, ponying up more money than Anheuser-Busch was willing to pay.

That same year, Anheuser-Busch looked at Interbrew's Carling beer business, a leading beer in the U.K. Anheuser-Busch executives decided to pass. Adolph Coors Co. did not, spilling out $1.7 billion for Carling.

In hindsight, Anheuser-Busch's traditional reluctance to jump into the deal with both feet looks prescient. The U.K. market has become extremely tough for Anheuser-Busch and its competitors.

Others brewers, however, are willing to take on the risks rather than watch opportunities slip away.

Just last year, Anheuser-Busch looked at a potential deal for U.K. brewer Scottish & Newcastle — but not too closely. Two European brewers — Dutch beermaker Heineken and Carlsberg of Denmark — swung the big acquisition instead.

Colombian brewer Bavaria? Acquired by SABMiller in 2005. Dutch brewer Royal Grolsch? Bought by SABMiller earlier this year.

Anheuser-Busch passed on a number of deals when the company had plenty of firepower on its balance sheet, argues Hutson of Gimme Credit. A number of key assets have been snatched off the table, he said.

"Clearly, they missed the boat on opportunities to grow the business overseas by not being as aggressive (as SABMiller and InBev) in acquiring foreign brewers," he said. "That clearly put them at a disadvantage vis-a-vis those other big guys."

jmcwilliams@post-dispatch.com

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