ST. LOUIS - Five years ago this week, Anheuser-Busch Cos. agreed to be acquired by Belgian brewer InBev, creating the world’s largest brewer and setting off ripples of worry as uncertainty loomed over one of St. Louis’ most revered homegrown businesses.
In the years since the $52 billion deal was announced July 13, 2008, much has changed at Anheuser-Busch’s corporate offices at One Busch Place.
The Busch family, who ran Anheuser-Busch for more than a century, exited the company, marking an end of an era.
Now, St. Louis is the North American headquarters for the combined Anheuser-Busch InBev, responsible for U.S. and Canadian operations. The company’s world headquarters is in Belgium.
To help pay for the huge merger, Anheuser-Busch sold Busch Entertainment’s 10 theme parks, including Busch Gardens and Sea World, to private equity firm Blackstone Group.
But St. Louis losing its place as the center of the company’s U.S. operations failed to materialize. In 2011, Anheuser-Busch said it planned to invest more than $1 billion in its U.S. facilities from 2011 to 2014, including upgrades to modernize operations at its St. Louis brewery.
Anheuser-Busch InBev remains the largest brewer in the country, with its market share accounting for close to half of all U.S. beer sales. Bud Light remains the best-selling beer in the country.
This year, the brewer marked the 80th anniversary of its iconic association with the Clydesdales, and the company said it’s exploring ways to extend the horses’ visibility internationally.
“There was a tremendous amount of concern that something bad for St. Louis was going to happen, like them closing the brewery or getting rid of the Clydesdales,” said Glenn MacDonald, an economics and strategy professor at Washington University’s Olin Business School.“The fear was that AB would be downsized to oblivion, and that clearly hasn’t happened.”
MacDonald said some of the changes made after the sale have helped solidify the company’s long-term viability.
“It had the trappings of a family company before, and Anheuser-Busch clearly did become a trimmer, more modern company,” he said. “In a way, AB being less efficient was probably a much bigger risk to St. Louis than InBev.”
In January 2012, Luiz Edmond, president of North America for Anheuser-Busch InBev, assumed leadership of the brewery’s U.S. operations in St. Louis upon the departure of President David Peacock, a former head of marketing at Anheuser-Busch who became president after the 2008 sale.
In front of more than 100 employees in May at a groundbreaking for a 300-seat biergarten at the St. Louis brewery, Edmond said the company remains committed to investing in St. Louis.
“We guarantee you that this is just a first step in a three- or four-year project that will bring new news every year and will make this a real attraction,” Edmond said of the new biergarten.
Referring to the Budweiser sign that’s been atop the Bevo building since the 1940s, Edmond said: “We hope it’ll be here for another 100 years.”
After the merger, the combined companies went through an integration period followed by what executives call “optimization.”
One of the changes after the merger included adding elements of Six Sigma - a management philosophy that uses data to cut waste and make improvements - throughout Anheuser-Busch, even in human resources.
“It’s a new company,” said Tom Pirko, president of Bevmark, a food and beverage industry consulting firm in Buellton, Calif. “The culture’s changed. The philosophy’s changed. The psychology’s changed. It’s a more disciplined company now and more a philosophy of a global company. We’ve seen a sea change. I hardly recognize it.”
Business, Pages 24 on 07/12/2013