It’s a cruel world if you are a stock market-listed company. Only a week after Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) issued a profit warning, saying that EBIT for the six months ending June were expected to fall 8 or 9 percent, the first fall in first-half earnings for seven years, analysts argued that time was up for CCA and that it should seek to merge with rivals Lion or Foster’s.

The recent spat between Coca-Cola Amatil’s CEO Terry Davis and Australia’s major retailers over why CCA’s products are several times more expensive in Australia than, for example, in Thailand, is as much a political battle as it is an economic one.

In an April 2013 submission to the Federal Treasury, Carlton & United Breweries (CUB), the Australian unit of SABMiller (formerly known as Foster’s) maintained that "the beer industry is no longer recession proof and it’s time that beer received similar favours to those enjoyed by wine and other beverages." CUB asked the Treasurer to follow the lead of the UK government, which earlier this year cut beer excise for the first time in over half a century, saying that tax now makes up 50 percent of the price of a case of VB, its major-selling beer.

In order to stuff the big holes in the country’s budget, the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, has doubled the sales tax on beer. On 23 April 2013 the Knesset’s financial committee decided to increase the sales tax on beer to NIS 4.20 (EUR 0.90) from NIS 2.18 (EUR 0.46) per litre, despite sharp criticism from industrial brewers and noisy protests from the many smaller breweries, which in Israel are called "beer boutiques". The Finance Ministry expects the sales tax increase to sweep about an extra EUR 60 million into their coffers.

Since Lion, Foster’s and even Coca-Cola Amatil are so heavily into craft beers, Asahi decided it did not want to be the odd one out. But rather than develop its own craft beer brand, at the end of April 2013 it decided to buy a brand that was already launched in 2009: Cricketers Arms.

That's tough: stumbling in the home straight. For years, Diageo, the world's number one drinks group, has tried to buy part of Vijay Mallya’s United Spirits group. In November 2012 it finally managed to clinch a deal for a 53 percent stake in the company.

The new Crafty Beggars range of beers, produced by Lion, has been banned by a retailer because its advertising material is “an insult to a great industry". In early March 2013 the retailer Liquorland Newmarket tweeted that it would no longer stock Crafty Beggars brews due to the tagline causing a backlash among drinkers.

India is a tough beer market to operate for every foreign beer company. Besides central regulations, the beer companies have to face regulations of each state in which it operates. However, this time the regulatory hurdle for a foreign beer producer didn’t come from India, rather from US Securities & Exchange Commission. Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Indian joint venture, which has been struggling to get a foothold in the Indian market, is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

On the face of it, the former Foster’s wine business, Treasury Wine Estates (TWE), on 28 February 2013 posted disappointing half year results to the end of December 2012: net profits fell 23.2 percent to AUD 45 million (USD 45.9 million) and net sales dipped 3.4 percent to AUD 816.9 million, while EBIT dropped 20 percent to AUD 73.4 million and volumes slipped 2.5 percent to 16.5 million cases.

The dispute over what constitutes a craft beer – as opposed to a pseudo craft – has now broken out in Australia too. While in the U.S., craft brewers complain that the “Big Brewers” put crafty-looking beers into the market thus hoping that their me-too creations can help them cash in on the growing craft beer boom, Australian consumers have long grown used to the fact that several former craft breweries are owned by the country’s major brewers. What has now caused an outcry is that one of the smaller craft brewers, Byron Bay Brewing, is having a beer brewed, packaged and marketed by Foster’s/SABMiller – without as much as telling consumers.