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around Capitol Hill promoting his company's takeover of Missouri brewing giant, Anheuser-Busch.
Meanwhile Omaha’s own Warren Buffett, the world’s richest man and the company’s second largest shareholder, is reportedly supporting the proposed $46.3 billion takeover. If so, this means that CEO August Busch IV will likely be the last of the Busch family to do a Budweiser ad.
There is much noise being made statewide, even nationally
about how awful this is for
Missouri. Editorialists are grumbling
and politicians are grousing and
Busch employees are fretting about
their jobs and their pensions. Meanwhile
the Anheuser Board, as it
must and as it ought, contemplates
Brito’s latest offer.
The noise will likely be too little,
and it is assuredly too late. The wheels
of commerce grind on, and if a few
people get ground up in the process,
the Busch family walks away with its
pockets well enough stuffed. In fairness, however, they
have done well by Missouri for many generations and deserve
their good fortune.
Augie Busch’s uncle, Adolphus Busch, is not one to fret
about a legacy lost. As a shareholder, he has gone on record
applauding Buffett’s reputation “for assisting in matters
where family ownership is at stake.
Uncle Adolphus continues, “Should Mr. Buffett see this merger as a positive action for all shareholders involved, the likelihood of a deal will increase enormously.”
The question has to be asked: to whom is the highest loyalty owed, the shareholders or the larger community? The technical answer, of course, is the shareholder, and technically we cannot disagree. Politicians please take note: free enterprise does not work without accepting the cold logic of profit.
Still, a family in its fourth generation of business, with literally scores of thousands of families depending on its stewardship, has a larger responsibility. Augie Busch IV can abdicate his role as CEO with no clearer a conscience than Edward VIII could abdicate his role as King of England, when he too yielded to the siren song of a foreign suitor, in his case the twice-married American temptress, Wallis Simpson.
To be fair to Augie, he does not have much choice in the matter. The Busch family has been selling its birthright for decades. There is little left to protect or negotiate with. To be fair to the Busches, this is the norm in family business, not the exception. If anything, the Busches have outperformed the norm over time.
Still, still, still, I wish they had done more. I wish they had captured the energy and the wisdom of the earlier generations and powered it back into the business. I wish they had understood how much their business had meant to so many and acted accordingly. I wish that Augie IV had had the business acumen to hang on to more than 4 or so percent of the company and secure control of the Anheuser-Busch legacy for Missouri and America.
It will be a sad day for Missourians and beer drinkers alike—and I know, those categories overlap and often— when control of Anheuser-Busch passes to Belgium. In many multi-generational businesses, unfortunately, business savvy dilutes as surely as light beer on ice.
I am hopeful that the Anheuser-
Busch institution can remain in our
Missouri family, but like many Bud
drinkers, minority investors and politicians
alike, all most of us can do is pony
up to the bar and watch this potentially
unfortunate scenario unfold.
Joe Sweeney
Editor-In-Chief & Publisher
Sweeney@IngramsOnLine.com