August A. Busch IV walked into the conference room outside his office for an interview Tuesday morning. Grabbing a chair at the head of the table, he hesitated. "I don't know if I should put Brito here or not," he said.

After 19 months as chief executive, Busch stills sits at the head of Anheuser-Busch Cos., the country's biggest brewer. But that role soon will be ceded to Carlos Brito, the deal-making chief executive of Belgian brewer InBev.

On Tuesday, Brito made his first appearance at the brewery since InBev's deal to buy Anheuser-Busch was announced. The visit marked the beginning of a major transition for Anheuser-Busch and the fifth-generation scion whose reign will end when the deal closes.

Anheuser-Busch's board of directors lent its stamp of approval to InBev's $52 billion buyout offer on Sunday. That made Busch and the Brazilian-born Brito partners in pulling Anheuser-Busch and InBev together to create the world's largest beer company. The deal is the 17th-largest takeover in history, according to Bloomberg LP.

But when your last name is Busch and your family has maintained a symbiotic relationship with Anheuser-Busch over five generations, the deal is not just about the money. For Busch, 44, the buyout is bittersweet.

In St. Louis, InBev's massive aspirations for Anheuser-Busch are hard to square with the poignant fact that Anheuser-Busch will not be its own master. When InBev launched its bid, the tide of global brewing combinations ran up against A-B's 156-year history of independence. The King of Beers had to yield.

In a meeting at Chesterfield's Spirit of St. Louis Airport on Sunday, August Busch and his company's board agreed to the deal after InBev raised its bid to $70 a share from $65.

"We had to do what was right for our shareholders; at the end of the day, that's who we work for," said Busch, a great-great-grandson of Anheuser-Busch's patriarch, Adolphus Busch. When asked about the impact of the sale on his family's legacy, he said: "It's a difficult feeling, needless to say."

Dressed in khaki slacks and a blue collared shirt, Busch chatted quietly for a few minutes before Brito arrived to meet with him and Anheuser-Busch employees. Brito was driven from his hotel by Dave Peacock, vice president of marketing at Anheuser-Busch's domestic beer unit and one of Busch's closest advisers. Brito came in and sat down beside Busch. He had come full circle.

Nearly two decades ago, Brito's first trip as a young brewing executive was to St. Louis to visit Anheuser-Busch, then the world's biggest brewer. He studied the brewer's relationships with wholesalers and its procedures for keeping beer fresh.

Now, he's back as the boss-in-waiting, professing respect for A-B and the company's potential. "What we do in our countries today is the mirror of what we learned here," he said.

Brito is scoping out talent at Anheuser-Busch, meeting staff and laying the groundwork for the integration of the two giant brewers. That process could be tough, Busch said, but both men expressed optimism.

Worries remain in St. Louis, slated to become Anheuser-Busch InBev's North American headquarters. The combined company plans to wring out $1.5 billion in savings over the next three years — up from A-B's $1 billion target announced last month.

Asked whether InBev would make deeper cuts to health care benefits or pensions than Anheuser-Busch already has announced, Brito said A-B's plan, called Blue Ocean, addresses the issues. "With what we know today, we think Blue Ocean takes care of all those things," he said.

Only two weeks ago, Brito publicly criticized Blue Ocean as carrying "significant execution risks." Now, he gushes about it.

"When you look from the outside, you don't know everything that an insider would know," Brito said. When InBev executives met with Anheuser-Busch executives shortly before an agreement was reached, they saw the plan had not been slapped together at the last minute or imposed from the top down without details, the InBev CEO said.

"We're very impressed with the depth and the analysis and the bottom-up nature of the plan," Brito said. "And so then we said, OK, it's not as we thought. … We saw we were wrong."

Still, with InBev contemplating trimming millions of dollars from overlapping corporate functions — ominous words in St. Louis — part of Brito's plan is winning the loyalty of Anheuser-Busch employees.

"If people are worried and they have concerns and you don't address those concerns, it's not good for them, not good for us, not good for the business," Brito said.

Asked about speculation that the notoriously cost-conscious InBev will cut its financial support for Anheuser-Busch's beer distributors, Brito said it would be premature to comment. But, he said, why change something that's working?

"The enemy's out there," he said, gesturing out the window. "The enemy is our competition. In here, we have no enemies."

'TOO SOON TO TELL'

A glass map of the world hangs in the lobby of Anheuser-Busch's ninth-floor executive offices. Little lights signify the location of Anheuser-Busch's facilities. The U.S. and China are heavily dotted with pinpoints; most of the rest of the world is dark.

Therein lies Anheuser-Busch's main strategic weakness, analysts say — the company's heavy reliance on the U.S. market, which is huge and highly profitable but growing slowly.

Both Busch and Brito insist that wrapping Anheuser-Busch into InBev will unleash Budweiser's potential in Europe, Brazil and other markets. Anheuser-Busch InBev, as the company will be called, will offer a perfect strategic fit of emerging and developed markets, Busch said.

"I think it will provide a ton of opportunity that we didn't have before as mainly a U.S.-based company," he said.

Brito arrived for Tuesday's interview with his passport tucked into his shirt pocket. That's appropriate for an executive whose company has significant operations in about 30 countries.

But despite InBev's international reach, analysts have chided InBev for being more efficient at cost-cutting than in building brands. One recently suggested that InBev needs A-B's brand-building culture because it is weak in marketing processes, particularly in developing insights into consumers' thinking.

Brito — whose company brews Stella Artois, Beck's, Hoegaarden, Leffe and Bass — disputes the characterization of his company as relatively weak on brand-building. In talking about the need for his company to have a beer for a drinker's every occasion — at the bar, at home, at a barbecue — Brito sounds for all the world like an Anheuser-Busch marketing executive.

But much is still up in the air about how the companies will coalesce, including which Anheuser-Busch executives will stick around after InBev takes over. Asked who will lead the combined company's North American operations once the deal has closed, Brito said the company had not yet decided. The leadership team will be announced in due course, he said.

"We have time to look at this," Brito said. "No need to rush."

For Busch's part, he said he'll have to think about how he will spend his time after the takeover leaves him without an executive job. He pointed out that he will serve on the board of FedEx and start a three-year term on the board of Anheuser-Busch InBev. Other than that, he said, "it's too soon to tell."