Anheuser Busch Merger

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Anheuser Busch (AB) has had a long history of mergers, acquisitions and dealing with antitrust laws due to their aggressive distribution techniques. Anheuser­Busch was founded in St. Louis, Missouri in 1852 after Eberhard Anheuser bought a failing brewery from Bavarian immigrant George Schneider. Anheuser, however, had no experience in brewing and quickly formed what we now know as Anheuser­Busch with his son­in­law Adolphus Busch(). As time progressed and AB grew in size, it was time for them to become an international distributor­ which is where InBev comes into the picture.
InBev is the product of even more breweries merging together, however. In 1999, two Brazilian brewers, Brahma and Antarctica, merged together to create one half of InBev …show more content…

However, that was just the beginning of the spending spree for AB InBev and it is easy to see the beginnings of a monopoly starting to form.
It wasn’t until 2013 that AB InBev began to run into its first issues with antitrust law when the firm attempted to acquire the Mexican Groupo Modelo, who brews such beers …show more content…

Not only are these microbreweries conveniently placed around some of the most heavily populated areas that AB InBev could use for other distribution points, but this was also the same time microbreweries began to take a larger share of the market­ 17.64% of the United States market. It is also important to note that AB InBev currently has about 46% of the market, with that number slowly dwindling down as microbrews become more popular around the nation, another reason that AB InBev would be interested in acquiring these breweries.
It has become clear at this point that AB InBev is constantly trying to increase their share of the market whenever they can, with a rumored acquisition in the works between Ab InBev and SABMiller, who is currently the second largest brewery in the United States. Again, they ran into antitrust law issues with their proposed acquisition and have been trying to make a case to sell off assets in other overseas companies to make this merger