How a medieval Leuven brewery grew into the world's biggest beer company
The world's largest brewer traces one of its roots to the Den Hoorn brewery, operating in Belgium by 1366. The rest came through a remarkable run of takeovers across four decades, as Belgian, Brazilian, American and Mexican brewers were folded into one company now selling roughly 630 beer brands in 150 countries.
The modern story begins in 1987, when Belgium's two largest breweries, Artois and Piedboeuf, merged as Interbrew. After buying up local rivals, it went abroad from 1991, starting in Hungary, then taking Canada's Labatt in 1995. The pace quickened after a family-owned company floated on the Brussels exchange in December 2000. Bass and Whitbread in Britain came that same year, followed by German names including Beck's and Spaten, and stakes in Chinese breweries.
Across the Atlantic, Brazil's two biggest brewers, Antarctica and Brahma, had combined in 1999 as AmBev. In 2004 Interbrew and AmBev merged in a deal valued at 11.5 billion dollars, joining the world's third- and fifth-largest brewers into a new number one called InBev. Anheuser-Busch, the St. Louis maker of Budweiser, had been the biggest by revenue before that.
Four years later InBev bought Anheuser-Busch itself, paying 70 dollars a share in cash, 52 billion dollars in all, and the combined firm became Anheuser-Busch InBev. The appetite continued. In 2013 it acquired Mexico's Grupo Modelo, owner of Corona, for 20.1 billion dollars, and in 2014 it bought back South Korea's Oriental Brewery, which it had sold in 2009.
The biggest bite came in 2015, with a bid of 70 billion pounds for its largest rival, SABMiller. Regulators demanded concessions before the deal closed in October 2016: the Miller brands went to Molson Coors, and names such as Peroni and Meantime were sold off. The price, about 107 billion dollars by completion, left a heavy bill, and by the end of 2019 total liabilities stood at 95.5 billion dollars. Headquarters remain in Leuven, with the main listing on Euronext Brussels.
Source: AB InBev
