FoodBanter.com - This Bud's for sale

On Thu, 4 Nov 2010 16:05:55 +0100 (CET), wrote:

>(Wall Street Journal) - If ever an American company represented the
>land of milk and honey for corporate executives it was Anheuser-
>Busch, though perhaps the land of hops, rice and barley would be
>more apt. For decades a palace of well-paid vice presidents in
>cushy offices presided over the manufacture of Budweiser, America's
>beer, in that most American of cities, St. Louis. They also oversaw
>the Busch Gardens theme parks in Virginia and in Florida, where
>Shamu the killer whale was on the payroll, along with a stable of
>250 Clydesdale horses. It was a first-class operation all the way.
>There were $1,000 dinners, hunting lodges, sky suites at Busch
>Stadium and a fleet of Dassault Falcon corporate jets with a staff
>of 20 waiting pilots. Every kitchenette refrigerator at corporate
>headquarters was well stocked with Bud, Bud Lite and Michelob.
>
>And why shouldn't the execs live well? The massive, 150-year-old
>company had an estimated value of $40 billion to $50 billion.
>Budweiser was, and is, one of the most recognized brands in the
>world, ahead of McDonald's, Disney and Apple. "Few companies on
>earth were more evocative of America, with all of its history and
>iconography, than Anheuser-Busch," writes veteran Financial Times
>journalist Julie MacIntosh in her strenuously reported book,
>"Dethroning the King: The Hostile Takeover of Anheuser-Busch, an
>American Icon" (Amazon: http://goo.gl/AXHLW ). As the title
>suggests, the reign of the King of Beers ended in the summer of
>2008, when the company merged with the Brazil-based brewing giant
>InBev, an outfit about as culturally different from Anheuser-Busch
>as one could imagine. At $70 a share, or $52 billion, it was the
>largest all-cash acquisition in history and even more noteworthy
>because it occurred during the gathering storm of a global
>financial collapse...
>
>Continued: http://xrl.us/DethroningKing

I hope InBev is smart enough to keep all those Clydesdales - after
all, they are the true source of that horse**** that Budweiser has the
effrontery to call 'beer'.

And of course everyone knows why drinking Budweiser is just like
making love in a canoe . . . . .
----
Diogenes

The wars are long, the peace is frail
The madmen come again . . . .