Busch Inbev Merger

When assessing the economic damage to due to Paul Thayer and those that he tipped off about the acquisition of Campbell Taggart, it should be noted that some argue that this kind of insider trading circulates information and forces the stock to its “true value.” If we assume this argument to be flawed, then part of Anheuser-Busch stock dip after the announcement was due to the insider trading and the fact Anheuser-Busch probably paid more to acquire its target. Thayer and his friends trade the Campbell stock for nearly a month before any public announcement of the merger. On July 27 nearly half the volume was insider volume controlled by those individuals who were in violation of rule 14(e)-3 (See exhibit 2). The increased volume might

From the liberal point of view, the FTC and the EC should recognize the Boeing-McDonnell Douglas merger as an international issue, not a national issue, so that it should restrain autonomy of state, in this case the U.S., preventing from intervention to protect domestic interests. However, in the case of Boeing-Mc Donnell Douglas, both antitrust authorities, specifically the European Commission, acted in a protectionist manner keeping domestic interests. In a study on 290 proposed acquisitions screened by the EC during 1990, it was found that although European merger and acquisition regulators claim to be protecting competition and consumers, in fact, the more harm suffered by European rival firms when the acquire is coming from the outside the EU, the greater the likelihood of European regulatory intervention against the proposed merger or acquisition . The EC’s focus on competitors rather than consumers was revealed by this study.

     In this paper I will be talking about the U.S. beer industry and in short an overview of the brewing industry worldwide. I will talk about the barriers to entry, economies of scale, government intervention, pricing, current market trends, product differentiation, and imports. The focus being mainly on the U.S. brewing industry oligopoly. The U.S. brewing industry has three major players: Anheuser-Busch, SAB Miller, and Coors/Molson. Anheuser-Busch is currently the largest brewer in the world, producing over 100 million barrels a year. Anheuser-Busch currently owns over 50% of the market in the United States, with Miller trailing behind at 20% and Coors at about 11% with the rest of the market occupied by imports and craft breweries. When analyzing any industry, how easy it is for newcomers to enter the market is a great importance. If there are high barriers to entry

Boston Beer Company (BBC) has enjoyed much success with their craft beers with Samuel Adams as their main focus. Being the leader of this segment, overtopping five of their competitors combined (Exhibit 1), the company now must decide how to take advantage of the light beer market. Boston Lightship, their current light beer, had been a small contributor in BBC’s product line. Currently, it is facing dwindling sales with product volumes down from 12 000 cases per month to 3000 cases per month.

SABMiller and Diageo are two largest beer producer in Africa. ”SABMiller, if combined with its partnership with France's Castel Group, sells roughly 60% Africa’s beer by volume. Diageo’s also expands its operation successfully that Senator Keg, its supercheap beer, is also now number two most popular beers in Kenya. As these giant brewers monopolized Africa’s beer market, it can be said that the market has an oligopoly market structure, and both pursue identic operations, so the market can be labeled as competitive. The interdependence that is happening between both brewers makes the competition happens. As SABMiller produces Impala that is half price from its previous beer Manica, Diageo produces Senator Keg to balance it. Diageo

A documentary film made in 2009, Beer wars features and describes the American beer industry distinguishing between the large and small breweries. The large breweries feature some main corporate companies like Coors Brewing Company, Anheuser-Busch, and Miller Brewing Company whereas the small breweries include craft beer producers like Moonshot 69, Stone Brewing Company, Dogfish Head Brewery, Yuengling, and others. The documentary shows how the beer market is controlled through advertising and lobbying, which is harmful for the competition in the market. There is a reason why the small companies are falling behind and the large corporates are controlling the market, which in turn makes it essentially oligopoly economy.

The merger between American Airlines and U.S. Airways is one that can be explained using static game theory models. The two players in the game would be American Airlines and U.S. Airways. Each one of the players would have something to gain from the merger, but they would also have something to lose. In this game American Airlines is our first player. American Airlines’ potential payoff is merging with a company that is maximizing profits, but is also lacking in the customer service department. U.S. Airways is player two, and in this game they are merging with a business that is suffering from chapter 11 bankruptcy, but is excelling in customer service.

In the summer of 2008, InBev NV, a Belgian-based brewing company formed from the merger of InterBrew and AmBev, offered a bid of $46.6 billion to acquire Anheuser-Busch Co to create the world’s largest brewing company at $65 a share. The initial offer was subsequently declined in part because the company felt the offer undervalued the company greatly. InBev later increased their offer to $70 a share and in Mid-July, Anheuser-Busch accepted the offer making the total cost of the deal $54.8 billion dollars. The issue then becomes whether the offer of $70 is justifiable to InBev’s shareholders. The merger brings about two different management styles. The culture at InBev focused on extreme cost-cutting measures and profitable incentive-based compensation programs. However, Anheuser-Busch’s culture differed in that they prided itself on philanthropy, diversity, and community involvement. In addition, this company possessed many luxurious offices and corporate fleet of aircrafts. Furthermore, they invested heavily in advertising, derived most of their profits in the United States, and possessed a lackluster international expansion plan. Issues the financial managers face will be differing business philosophies in regards to marketing (“Grow/Defend/Maintain/Cash” matrix approach vs the large marketing budget of Anheuser-Busch), culture (cost cutting measures vs company perks), and the future of the twelve

Based in St. Louis, Missouri, Anheuser-Busch is the leading American brewer. The company is one of the largest theme park operators in the United States, a major manufacturer of aluminum cans and one of the world’s largest recyclers of aluminum cans. Our diverse background also includes malt production, rice milling, real estate development, turf farming, label printing and transportation services.

As the world’s largest brewer, AB Inbev has the ability to compete in new and foreign markets as a strong threat. Due to their enormous capital and expansion-based strategy, they can enter any market as a challenger and shutdown competition to become the leading brewer in this market. As an aggregated note we can also see this in domestic or already dominated markets because due to economics of scale they can achieve differentiated products at a low cost.

As the future growth of the industry also is shown to be positive, the company’s fundamental strategies in terms of management, employees satisfaction, cost cutting to reduce unnecessary expenditure, giving constant returns in terms of dividend, refinancing the money into for the expansion of brands not working well for the company ,tapping for the emerging markets, entering into 40 different variants show a clear indication that merger proves to be a great move for the company and beverage industry performance

Although sales of premium brands have fallen in a steady response to the growing popularity of the craft beer. The industry revenue has been stable over the past 5 years. As a result, from 2011 to 2016 the industry revenue is expected an increase and growth annually at 6.7 percent over the five years,with a total of $39.5 billion . (IBISWorld iExpert) In the long-term, these numbers are expected that grow 0.9 percent annually within the next five years. The potential growth will be seen in the traditional and premium beer sector. As a response, the giant companies in the industry Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors look forward into the merges and acquisitions as a strategy to maintain market dominance. The strategy is based on the

Despite the dominance of Carlsberg, in its annual report BGD could lay claim to being the largest Scandinavian beer exporter. This was because Carlsberg placed emphasis on licensing agreements or local production for its foreign markets, while BGD’s strategy was export led: ‘Eighty-three out of every hundred bottles of beer that we produce are sold in foreign markets.’ By 1995 the percentage of export sales by region of the world was as follows: western Europe 63 per cent, the Americas 10 per cent, eastern Europe 22 per cent, others 5 per cent. The development of BGD’s operations in some of these markets is now reviewed.

Beer Company 2 is a brewer of “seasonal and year-round beers with smaller production volume and higher prices” that “outsources most of its brewing activity” (pg. 120). It is financially conservative, and has undergone a “major cost-savings initiative to counterbalance the recent surge in packaging and freight costs” (pg. 120).

Other Political factors involve the tight regulations many countries place on mergers and acquisitions and monopolistic behaviour. In the last 10 years the alcohol industry has seen an unprecedented consolidation as the largest firms try to identify the most profitable segments of the fastest growing and most profitable new markets. This often leads to infringements with national regulations about competition and market monopoly, resulting in the sale having to be approved by a government agency.