SABMiller If you love beer, you’ll hate this
“Notwithstanding our good faith efforts, the Board of SABMiller has refused to meaningfully engage with us,” huffed ABInbev CEO Carlos Brito just last week. Turns out, amazingly, that all it took to get SAB’s board on-board, as it were, was a little more cash. Well, when we say a little, we mean a lot, obviously: having opened the bidding at $58 a share, ABInbev finally found success at $67.58, for a total of $104billion. The combined businesses currently have sales totalling $55billion, and will own nine of the world’s top twenty beers. Hilariously, both have attempted in recent months to defend themselves against loss of market share to actual beer by tapping (ahem) into the craft beer market, acquiring independent breweries on both sides of the Atlantic, and rendering them immediately corporate and decidedly uncrafty.
Comment: What breath-taking economies of scale can one business of this size achieve that two slightly smaller businesses could not? What mind-blowing innovations will they bring to the market, together, that they could not have done separately? Tell us, and then we’ll all know. In the meantime, shareholders will cash in, as if that’s the only thing that matters.