Free Republic

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Anheuser-Busch InBev said Wednesday that it will sell its entertainment business, including theme parks like Sea World and Busch Gardens, to the Blackstone Group for as much as $2.7 billion.The final purchase price will involve a cash payment of $2.3 billion on closing and the right to participate in Blackstone's returns that is capped at $400 million.

New York, NY – The Diageo/Hotline Daily Tracker Poll finds that John McCain used last week’s Republican National Convention to bounce back from a 6-point deficit against Barack Obama in our September 5 Poll to make the race a dead-heat with 44% of voters supporting McCain, 44% of voters supporting Obama and 10% undecided.Presidential General Election, McCain-Palin vs. Obama-Biden, September 5 to 7, 2008 McCain-Palin Obama-Biden Undecided 44% 44% 10% Favorability Ratings for Presidential Candidates and their Running Mates, September 5 to 7, 2008   McCain Obama Palin Biden Favorable 54% 54% 48% 48% Unfavorable 38% 38% 24% 26% Ratings...

Politicians and Wall Streeters are starting to ask why the Belgian beer company InBev purchased Anheuser-Busch and not the other way around. Anheuser-Busch is an iconic American firm and some find it almost unpatriotic that Anheuser CEO August Busch IV allowed the "King of Beers" to relocate across the Atlantic -- though shareholders were the big winners here with a $50 billion-plus takeaway. But here's the real question: Was the takeover basically financed by the savings Anheuser expected from escaping America's increasingly uncompetitive corporate tax system? According to the Tax Foundation, Belgium's corporate tax rate is 33%, but the effective...

St. Louis—In what could be the biggest disaster since Hurricane Katrina, Budweiser—after being sold to Belgian based InBev—has immediately plans to change the formulation for their beer. The change comes to reflect a European style of beer, giving it a more “fruitier and nuttier taste,” a veritable Bud “spritzer.” The beer, known to the common working class man, will now appeal to the most erudite of Americans. The “King Of Beers” will indeed have a flavor made for a king, flushing years of perfection down the toilet.

There is a crisis that no one is talking about. It’s not the energy dependence crisis, the spending crisis in our federal government, the imaginary-though-fragile economic crisis nor the mainstream media’s it’s-not-a-crisis-but-we-are-going-to-make-it-look-like-one banking crisis. America is being sold off to foreigners at a discount. That’s a crisis. The latest incident of this dismantling of America was the hostile takeover of Anheuser-Busch (AB) by the Belgium beer company InBev. Most corporate merger observers saw this as just another premium payday for the stockholders of AB. But my memory of what used to be The Pillsbury Company caused me to see this...

"It would be a shame if Bud is foreign-owned," Barack Obama said last week, when asked about the prospect of InBev taking over Anheuser-Busch. Many Americans no doubt share these sentiments.Believers in free markets naturally disagree, and they are probably joined by legions of beer connoisseurs. They are also joined by a motley group of World War I aficionados. InBev is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, home of one of Europe's oldest and most prestigious universities. On Aug. 25 and 26, 1914, the town was sacked by German troops. ("The Oxford of Belgium" was then better known by its French name,...

S IN an old-fashioned Western bar brawl, Anheuser-Busch tried to hit InBev with anything that came to hand. The American brewer was attempting to rebuff an assault by its Belgian-Brazilian rival, which had offered $46 billion in an unsolicited bid on June 11th. Anheuser-Busch tried to use the business equivalent of a bar stool over the head—a lawsuit claiming that InBev had misled investors. The American firm even dealt the low blow of citing InBev’s Cuban businesses as a reason to reject the bid. These tactics came to nothing, however, after InBev opened its wallet and upped the offer to...

Anheuser-Busch's board has accepted a $52 million takeover offer from Belgian brewer InBev, creating the world's largest brewer, the two companies announced late Sunday evening. The company will be called Anheuser-Busch InBev, and InBev CEO Carlos Brito will be the CEO of the combined company. "Together, Anheuser-Busch and InBev will accomplish much more than each can on its own," Brito told reporters in a conference call Monday morning. The announcement ends a month of hostility between the brewer of Budweiser and InBev, which traded lawsuits when InBev tried to oust A-B's board. "We always tried to engage with the Anheuser-Busch...

BREAKING NEWS: Anheuser-Busch and InBev have completed a deal at $70 per share, which will create a new company to be named Anheuser-Busch InBev. Anheuser will get two seats on the combined board.

Anheuser-Busch's (BUD) stock closed up over $5 at $66.50 on Friday and is trading at $67.00 after-hours. This price suggests the market is nearly certain that InBev will buy BUD at the rumored $70/share, and it may even incorporate the expectation of an additional price increase: given the political scrutiny this deal will receive, a 5% gap between the trading price and deal price is small. In other news, InBev's potential purchase of BUD is reverberating through St. Louis and the country...and folks aren't happy about it: Jordan Moore took the news that his beloved Budweiser could soon fall into...

Union leaders representing InBev workers in Brazil, Canada and Europe have a simple message for Anheuser-Busch employees if InBev takes control of the St. Louis-based brewery: Watch out. "They should worry, because the production is going to be concentrated and the work force reduced," says Siderlei Oliveira, president of Brazil's 1.2 million-member food workers union, citing a reduction in Brazil's brewery workers to 13,000 from 23,000 since the 1990s. "This is the strategy that they have." In Canada, labor-management relations are "starting to thaw after a significant period of turmoil" marked by years of strikes, lockouts, changes in work rules,...

Excerpt - Anheuser-Busch Inc. confirmed it has received an unsolicited $65 per share offer from Belgian brewer InBev to buy the iconic American brewer. With more than 713 million shares outstanding, the bid is valued at more than $46.3 billion. Anheuser-Busch's board of directors will evaluate the proposal and make its decision to InBev's proposal in due course. The brewer of Budweiser and Bud Light said that its board of directors will act in the best interests of the company's stockholders. Anheuser-Busch is the dominant domestic competitor of Miller Brewing Co., of Milwaukee. ~ snip ~