Reprise from spring 2008 - When The King of Beers became Belgian owned, we all paused…

Like Labatts and Brahma Beer before her, Stellaaaa’s! (Artois that is) parent company In-Bev got thirsty and gulped down St. Louis, Missouri based Budweiser Beer in one chug for a cool $52 billion dollars. Ouch.

Long the butt of Dutch jokes (in true Oklahoma vs. Texas style), Belgians are starting to flex their global financial muscles. Fortis Group took out storied financial institution ABN-AMRO, Holland’s biggest bank and no one is smiling over this one except those in Flanders’ Field. Not the least the citizenry of St. Louis, Missouri who has owed much of its growth and cultural icons to the goodwill and largesse of the Busch family, owners of the Anheuser Busch brewing company until this morning.

This really shows how dumb Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo! was to walk away from $46.5 billion dollars from Microsoft and they don’t even make anything! InBev’s first offer was $45 billion dollars and Budweiser said no. When it reached 52 the board there was much smarter, said thank you very much and made for the exit very quietly, very rich and very happy. Now do you understand why Carl Icahn was so upset?

InBev is not known for largesse and philanthropy. They are in the Vlaamse or Dutch side of Belgium so they tend to be more like your Dutch aunt (who did not get that title from her generosity) so the citizenry did everything they could to slow the deal but in the end, money… lots of it, talked.

They join a growing list of consumer good companies that look made in the USA but are owned elsewhere. So what does made in America mean and how surprising is it to find out that Mutual of Omaha is owned by Dutch financial services giant ING Group, that Shell is a Dutch British consortium or Dannon yogurt is owned by Danone in (gasp!!!) France?

When you shop at a Giant Supermarket in the Washington area, do you know or care that it is a subsidiary of Royal Ahold in The Netherlands.

What I can’t understand is why in a world of great tasting beers; Bud was never in the same league as European beers. Why not buy Guinness, Heineken, Cobra or Grolsch? Great beers, but even the Czech Bud surpasses the St. Louis one. Why pay so much for bad beer by your standards? You could have had distribution rights/agreements for much less.

Oh well, boys and their toys. How long before we see a Bud logo in a Champions League tie?