IT’S BEEN A busy year for beer and things are coming to (ahem) a head this week.
After months of dickering, the world’s largest beer maker, Anheuser-Busch InBev, is buying the world’s second-largest beer maker, SABMiller for about $104 billion. That’s greater than the GDP of Ecuador and the single biggest deal in the history of beer. Assuming the deal clears all the regulatory hurdles, the new company would own about one of every three beers in the world, not to mention fat stacks of capital and unprecedented access to supply and distribution chains.
And that’s making a lot of small-time brewers and craft beer purists very nervous.
Dispatches From The Front 