By the time you will be reading this, SABMiller will be no more. After winning shareholder approval on 28 September 2016, AB-InBev will drop the SABMiller name and begin trading as a combined company on 11 October 2016. SABMiller ceased trading on the London and Johannesburg stock exchanges on 5 October 2016.

A buyer no one had on the radar has snatched up the Belgian brewer Bosteels. Media reported on 9 September 2016 that AB-InBev has purchased the 225-year-old Brouwerij Bosteels, best known for its Kwak and Karmeliet beers.

There are signs that Russia’s economy is bottoming. Analysts say that Russia’s unemployment peaked in March 2016 at 6 percent, but declined to 5.3 percent in July. Inflation has been gradually slowing from 9.8 percent in January to 7.2 percent in July. They expect declining inflation to partially offset the headwinds from increasing price competition in the beer industry.

Should Mr Castel be amused or intrigued? AB-InBev CEO Carlos Brito told analysts that, once the SABMiller takeover has been bedded down, he hopes to develop SAB’s partnership with France’s Castel Group. The privately-owned Castel Group is one of the biggest brewers in Africa. For over a decade SABMiller and Castel had an alliance whereby SABMiller owned 20 percent of Castel and Castel owned 38 percent of SABMiller’s African business, excluding South Africa.

Belgian media were having a field day. In early September 2016 they tried to outdo each other in speculation and rumour. The only thing that seems certain is that the speciality beer producer Bosteels has been put up for sale by its owners, the Bosteels family and the private equity outfit Waterland. In 2014 Waterland had acquired a 50 percent stake in Bosteels, a 100,000 hl brewery located in Buggenhout, best known for its Kwak and Karmeliet beers. The brewery was founded in 1791 and is currently run by the 7th generation Antoine Bosteels.

The court ruling that SABMiller’s shareholders should be divided into two groups when voting on AB-InBev’s takeover offer on 28 September 2016 was hailed by some as a victory for small shareholders. A victory, really?

Doesn’t this sound familiar? First comes the deal then the cost cuts? In well-known fashion AB-InBev will reduce its head-count once the SABMiller deal is completed in about two months. AB-Inbev said on 26 August 2016 that 3 percent of its workforce will have to go.

Heineken currently operates three breweries in The Netherlands, one of which is located in the southern city of ’s-Hertogenbosch, which is colloquially known as Den Bosch. The facility currently produces around six million hectoliters (600 million liters/159 million gallons) of beer annually, which is exported to more than 150 countries.

Before AB-InBev can officially take over SABMiller, shareholders in SABMiller will have to vote on the offer on 28 September 2016. At the behest of SABMiller’s board, the UK High Court ruled on 24 August 2016 that SABMiller’s two biggest investors, Altria and Bevco (the Santo Domingo family) should be treated as a separate group to others in the vote, meaning a higher level of approval will be needed for the deal to proceed.

Rather than clearing up the muddle of how to define craft beer, Italy’s lawmakers have made it even muddier by stipulating that it must not be pasteurised or microfiltered. Which makes you wonder: what were they thinking?