AB InBev Finally Making Deal With US Over Modelo

Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, which controls close to 19 percent of the globe’s beer market, has been trying to buy Mexico’s Grupo Modelo SAB, which owns close to 3 percent of the world’s beer market, for months now, only held up by the pesky US government, which thought the merger could mean too much power for AB InBev. 

The two sides have been talking since at least February about how a deal might be structured so that everybody gets what they want. And now, just days before the two sides were requested to report to a US District Judge, the word on the street is that they have come to an agreement, Bloomberg.com reports.

In order to have this merger occur, Modelo will have to “sell control of all its brands in the US, as well as a brewery it built in Piedras Negras, Mexico, to Constellation Brands (STZ), a winemaker and drink-distribution company,” Bloomberg reports. As part of the new agreement, InBev “gave up an option to buy back a stake in Crown Imports LLC, the US distributor of Corona and the other Modelo brands.” Crown will end up being owned by Constellation.Continue reading...

AB InBev reached a tentative agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice over its disputed $20.1 billion acquisition of Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo, which faces inquiry over Mexico worker deaths.

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For more than a century, there’s been a bar fight going on between the world’s biggest brewer, AB InBev (and all its predecessors) and Czech brewer Budejovicky Budvar NP. Both claim they should have the rights to the name “Bud” in Europe. 

The most recent winner is AB InBev after the EU General Court in Luxembourg “rejected Budvar’s appeal of AB InBev’s right to the EU trademark because the Czech company presented insufficient proof of the existing use of the name in some European countries,” Bloomberg reports.

Anheuser-Busch InBev NV claims to have been using the Bud name since 1876. Budvar did not exist until 19 years later. AB InBev put in an application for the trademark in July 1996 and, according to the court, Budvar couldn’t show that it had used the term across Europe before then.Continue reading...

Anheuser-Busch InBev already owned half of Mexican Grupo Modelo but the world’s biggest brewer apparently needs to keep consuming all in its sight. InBev shelled out $20.1 billion to grab the other half of the brewer of such beers as Corona and Modelo and stake its claim to the growing Mexican market. The name of the website it set up to announce the deal says it all: GlobalBeerLeader.com.

It's a huge purchase, to be sure, but AB InBev sees the upside in the company as a whole and its Corona brand specifically. Modelo “is Mexico's biggest brewer with a 50 percent-plus market share in a virtual duopoly with Heineken's FEMSA Cerveza in the world's fourth most-profitable beer market,” Reuters reports. “Corona is the biggest imported beer in the lucrative U.S. market.” InBev shelled out so much dough partly because Modelo stakeholders had no real incentive to sell.Continue reading...

Australia's Foster's Group, which last month officially spun off its wine interests, has rejected an unsolicited $10 billion takeover bid from SABMiller because the bid "significantly undervalues" the company. According to The Australian, the SAB move follows a revised deal with its joint venture partner, Coca-Cola Amatil, and another unsolicited run at Foster's — by Mexico's Modelo brewery — last week.

Click here for the NYT's take, or watch SABMiller CEO Graham Mackay's comments below.