Word: busches
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...foam settled on the biggest drinks merger in history, workers at Anheuser-Busch have been a lot less keen than shareholders to toast the company's $52 billion takeover by the Belgium-based behemoth InBev. Unions in hard-hit St. Louis, Missouri, where Budweiser has been brewed since 1876, pledged to protect the jobs of Anheuser-Busch's's 30,000-strong workforce. They better roll up their sleeves, because InBev will bring to town a reputation as a ruthless cost-cutter that has prospered by slicing fat from its units, consolidating breweries and laying off staff in a relentless...
...management-driven company, not brand-driven," says Theo Vervloet, the chairman of trade association Belgian Brewers. "They will use salami tactics: slicing here and there in little bits. InBev has to pay off some $7 billion in debt, and it will look for savings everywhere. The Anheuser-Busch family has been brewing for 150 years, but they will have to answer to new bosses...
...InBev's empire sprawls across 200 brands including Beck's, Stella Artois, Labatt, Brahma, Leffe, Hoegaarden and Skol. The combined company will now be called Anheuser-Busch InBev, and headed by InBev's Brazilian chief executive, Carlos Brito. InBev has pledged that the company's North American headquarters would remain in St. Louis, and that none of Anheuser's 12 U.S. breweries would be closed. The two brewers say their merger will generate annual savings of $1.5 billion from measures like better managing the supply chain and that layoffs will be kept to a minimum because there is little current...
...fend off the unsolicited merger, Anheuser-Busch management last month itself unveiled its own "Blue Ocean" cost-cutting program, promising savings of $1.09 billion by 2011 but losing around 1,200 jobs in the process. And with global recession threatening, beer markets consolidating, barley and aluminum prices soaring, and sales declining in many mature markets, there are fears of further cuts. Tellingly, Brito made no promises on job cuts, nor on the sale of non-core assets like Anheuser-Busch's theme parks and its aluminium can recycling units...
...clear, however, whether anyone has that power. The sprawling Busch family is divided on the InBev offer, which at $65 per share is well above any price the long-stalled stock has seen from Wall Street. No single family member owns more than 1% of the firm...