Maybe they need someone to take the role of Cyrano de Bergerac.

InBev Remains Committed to $46.3 Billion Anheuser Bid

InBev NV, whose bid for Anheuser-Busch Cos. was rejected by the Budweiser maker, repeated that it’s committed to its offer of $65 a share and would prefer a friendly takeover.

The bid reflects the “full and fair” value of the company, InBev Chief Executive Officer Carlos Brito said in an e-mailed statement today. The Leuven, Belgium-based brewer will pursue “all available avenues” to allow Anheuser shareholders to vote directly on the offer.

Meanwhile, A-B has already announced a reduction in its workforce, reduction in pensions, and an increase in the employee contributions for healthcare, all in an effort to cut costs and remain independent.

Yesterday, Anheuser-Busch’s Board of Directors rejected InBev’s unsolicited takeover offer. Saying that $65 per share was “financially inadequate”, the Board left open the possibility that a higher offer might sweep them off their feet.

Meanwhile, InBev has stated that it will ask A-B shareholders to dump the current Board. However, some analysts  think that the Belgian/Brazilian titan will sweeten its offer, perhaps as high as $75 per share.

InBev May Need $7 Billion More to Win Over Anheuser

Anheuser-Busch’s rejection of the offer yesterday was the board’s first response since InBev made its unsolicited proposal June 11. InBev said it preferred a friendly combination of its Bass, Beck’s and Stella Artois with Budweiser, while still pursuing an ouster of the board.

A purchase at the current price would be the biggest of a consumer company since Procter & Gamble Co. bought Gillette Co. for $57 billion in 2005.

While Busch told distributors in April that the company wouldn’t be sold while he was in charge, the family doesn’t own enough shares to sway a shareholder vote on the board. Directors and executives hold 4.5 percent of the company’s shares, according to a regulatory filing earlier this year.  

This corporate soap opera continues, with analysts figuring that any more than $67 per share will make the deal unprofitable for InBev. Additionally, A-B is not above dumping some divisions and implementing cost-cutting measures to boost its stock price.

Meanwhile, the fate of thousands of employees–who, in their own way, are beer lovers–hangs in the balance.

Tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of Beers of Our Lives.

Well, the rumors are true.

After the market closed yesterday, InBev announced that it has offered $46.3 billion, or $65 a share, to take over Anheuser-Busch. (BUD closed at $58 yesterday.)

Market Watch: Market cheers InBev’s $46 bln Anheuser-Busch bid

(Google News)

The offers is for cash, and is leveraged with about $40 billion in debt.

August Busch IV has gone on record as saying that such deal “will not happen on my watch”. However a number of shareholders, including some Busch family members apparently, have indicated that they’re interested. InBev stock is up in Europe this morning. All the money people, it seems, like the idea.

Not everybody does, though. Most of the coverage I’ve read mentions that Anheuser-Busch is such an iconographic American company that there will be a lot of resistance to this deal. Especially during this Presidential campaign year.

Huffington Post: Politicians Line Up To Save Anheuser-Busch Shareholders From Profits, InBev

There are already websites—not to mention blog posts—opposing the deal, such as savebudweiser.com. (For blogs, try the Beer Blog Search Engine or Technorati.)

I’m not entirely sure what my opinion is on this. As a red-blooded American, the thought of yet another American icon losing its identity pains me. On the other hand, I have no great love for either megacorporation’s products, so they’re already not getting my money and likely won’t in the future. It’s business, and each corporation is looking out for the interests of its shareholders, which it should. But then, when was the last time a huge merger like this was good for anyone but the shareholders? Job cuts are a given, and probably contraction of some brands. Price increases are almost certainly in the cards (there will be that $40 billion debt to pay off, after all). Worse, there will be even more pressure on smaller producers.

All in all, I don’t like it. But it seems inevitable.

You don’t need to have your finger on the pulse of the beer industry to have heard the continuing rumors of the two largest beer producers in the world (one by sales, the other by volume) in merger talks. Their recent mutual distribution agreement is widely seen as a precursor to a full-fledged merger. Profits for A-B were up in the 4th quarter of 2007, but the large jump on February 1 is attributed to these InBev merger rumors. (CNN Money: Anheuser-Busch Shares Up on InBev Report)

I’m no pundit, and certainly you can get more coverage from mainstream media sources (CNN, Bloomberg, Reuters, New York Times) and the beer blogosphere (Jay Brooks, and more), but I would be remiss if I didn’t bring it to your attention. Of course, around this time last year the same rumors were circulating, but they seem more strident this time.

There won’t be any in-depth analysis here, but I do wonder what will happen. Assuming the rumors are true, who benefits? The stockholders in the two companies, obviously. The workers at the companies? Generally not. Employees who hold company stock in their retirement plans count as stockholders, of course, but then there’s all the employees who will lose their jobs as the merged company gets rid of “redundancies”. Executives will do well, if only with golden parachutes.

Of course, that’s not the focus of this blog either. We’re about the beer, here. So what about it? I expect there will continue to be experimentation with products in the “craft” space. If only because craft beer is still, at least for the time being, growing at a double-digit rate. Really, though, I expect more of the same. I expect the companies to realize cost-savings by brewing far-away recipes closer to home. Why ship all that beer across the Atlantic when you can brew it at a regional A-B facility and slap the “exotic” label on it?

But, honestly, do I expect any new, interesting, good beers to be produced by this new company? No.

What really concerns me is the smaller brewers; the ones whose beers I love. Instead of dealing with a couple of industry giants and working to find their own niche (and distribution), they’ll now have to compete with a Ginormous Behemoth. Will any niches be left and will they be big enough to sustain the “real” craft brewers? I wonder if we’ll see a contraction in the craft beer space similar to what we saw after the go-go eighties.

I wish I knew what it all means. I can’t ignore it.