9.
BUILDING AN AGILE ORGANIZATION
On November 18, 2008, August Busch IV relinquished his role as president and CEO of the brewing company run by his family for five generations, and transferred control to InBev. The combined entity, now Anheuser-Busch InBev, became the largest brewer in the world by volume, revenues, and profit. Busch, a scion of the family that built Anheuser-Busch into the dominant brewer in the United States, had opposed the acquisition, but relented after InBev sweetened its bid to $52 billion.
The press referred to InBev as a European firm, but in fact the company that drove the creation of the world’s largest brewer was Brazilian. InBev emerged from the 2004 merger of Belgium’s Interbrew and Brazil’s AmBev. The Brazilian ...
