Super Beer Is Going Down! Justice Department Will Approve Budweiser-Miller Merger

Are you ready to drink some Super Beer? Damn straight you are.

And you’re gonna be able to. Soon. Because Super Beer is about to be here.*

Back in September, we told you that Budweiser’s parent company, AB InBev, was looking to buy Miller’s parent company, SABMiller.

A couple things had to happen before it could be approved, though, due to U.S. anti-trust laws. Predominantly, SABMiller had to drop its majority stake in Coors. Because a Budweiser-Miller-Coors Super Super Beer would have blown everyone’s minds.

That’s done, and now the purchase is about to go through. The Chicago Tribune has the scoop.

The Justice Department is poised to approve Anheuser-Busch InBev’s takeover of SABMiller in an agreement that may include measures to keep the beer behemoth from edging craft brewers from shelves, according to people familiar with the matter.

U.S. clearance of the $107 billion combination is on track for later this month, according to three people familiar with the process. The accord could include limits on the combined company’s ownership of distributors, said one of the people.

U.S. antitrust approval would bring the maker of Budweiser a step closer to completing the industry’s biggest merger ever and redraw control of the global beer market. The merged company will be followed by Heineken and Molson Coors Brewing in the No. 2 and No. 3 spots by market capitalization.

Of course, not everyone is as stoked as I am about Super Beer. Some people are poo pooing the merger because wah wah buy local little guys blah blah blah.

From a New York Times editorial by the president and chief executive of the Brewers Association, Bob Pease:

A merger between the world’s two largest brewers would give the new global corporation, with an estimated $64 billion in annual revenue and control over an astounding 29 percent of the global beer market, an even greater ability to hobble its competitors, at both the production and distribution levels. The enlarged Anheuser-Busch InBev will have more influence over which brands distributors carry, making it harder for smaller companies to get their products onto store shelves. It will have even more power to strong-arm independent distributors not to carry rival brands and exert pressure on retailers to cut back on, or even refuse to carry, competitive brands. And it will have more resources to buy up smaller breweries as they start to feel squeezed out of the marketplace.

Yea but it will also make Super Beer.

*It is my understanding that Super Beer is not an actual thing that will be brewed after the merger, and only something I made up in my head. I apologize for the confusion.

[H/T Eater]

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