This Bud's for sale: InBev offers $46.3B for Anheuser-Busch

NEW YORK -- A-B announced after the U.S. markets' close that it had "received an unsolicited, non-binding proposal from InBev to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Anheuser-Busch for $65 per share in cash."

A-B's stock closed up 2% Wednesday at $58.35 before the announcement, but rose to more than $62 after-hours. The company would not comment further on the bid except to say the board would "evaluate the proposal carefully and in the context of all relevant factors, including Anheuser-Busch's long-term strategic plan" and make a determination "in due course."

Despite A-B's 148-year family heritage and CEO August Busch IV's recent statements that it's not for sale, the family holds just 4% of voting stock and can't block a takeover.

"If it turns out to be a hostile arrangement, it is a colossal deal," says Benj Steinman, editor of industry tracker Beer Marketer's Insights. "It would be the largest beer deal ever."

The company's sales volume and share price have been virtually flat for five years, as have overall U.S. beer sales. Last year, A-B started to see improvement for core brands Bud Light, Budweiser and Michelob, as well as Rolling Rock, which A-B bought from InBev's U.S. unit. But first-quarter 2008 sales for A-B's key brands fell 1.4%.

A takeover of A-B, which has 48.5% of the $90 billion U.S. beer market, would extend a global consolidation trend as the industry faces slower growth and higher costs. Last week, the Department of Justice approved a merger of the U.S. operations of SABMiller, the world's largest brewer by volume, and Molson Coors — just three years after Coors and Molson merged. Earlier this year, Heineken and Carlsberg bought Scottish & Newcastle. InBev itself is the result of a merger in 2004 of Belgium's InterBrew and AmBev, South America's largest brewer.