On Saturday, Heineken announced that it rejected an overture from London-based beer giant SABMiller. One of those merger-acquisition things you hear about on TV that seems alien to our world of small, privately owned craft breweries. The overture was intended to help SABMiller fend off a possible takeover. Now, SABMiller is considering its next steps to avoid being assimilated by AB Inbev.
The story has been widely reported by media sources around the world. Unless another big player, like Diageo Plc or Carlsberg A/S wants to step in and work with SABMiller, the writing is on the wall. If AB Inbev wants it, they got it.
This whole thing involves a London-based company being overtaken by a Belgium-based company, which is actually owned by a Brazilian company. It’s bigger than the USA and our feeble little laws and our puny little Bud Lights and Coors Lights. It’s really confusing and huge.
The deal would reportedly be worth $122 billion. Get it? Big. If this deal goes through, it would create a global beer behemoth the likes of which the world has never known.
Understand, this is not about Budweiser buying Coors and Miller. It’s about AB Inbev acquiring SABMiller. It’s really confusing. The brands that we associate with Anheuser-Busch, Coors, and Miller in the United States are babyshit: just small players in this massive, global game of Beer Risk.
I don’t want to go into any details. It would take me at least 600 words to explain the relationship between all the players and, frankly, I don’t want to.
If you want to know more, Google it. This is a blog dedicated to craft beer. I just thought it worth mentioning.
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
According to Forbes, today: “Shares of the world’s biggest beer makers are anything but cold and frosty in Monday trading: on the heels of Heineken’s rejection of SABMiller’s takeover attempt, not only are Heineken and SABMiller trading in the green, but so are shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev and Molson Coors Brewing TAPCompany.”