Constellation Brands said that a lawsuit, which Grupo Modelo had filed against Constellation in December 2009 over funding increased spending on promotion and marketing for Crown, won’t affect the joint venture.

Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo announced on 15 December 2009 that it is suing its partner Constellation Beers in a New York court in a dispute over marketing expenses.

MBAA and the American Society of Brewing Chemists (ASBC) will co-locate the MBAA Convention and ASBC Annual Meeting in 2010, creating Brewing Summit 2010. The Summit will run as follows

Already in November 2009, Pabst’s owner, the Kalmanovitz Charitable Foundation, based in California, hired Bank of America Merrill Lynch to find a buyer willing to pay around USD 300 million.

Like other Japanese beer companies, Suntory is scrambling to expand its overseas businesses to reduce its dependence on a shrinking domestic market.

Since October 2009, the company has seen sales of premium wines grow at a faster rate than cheaper "value" products, Chief Commercial Officer Jay Wright was reported as saying in November 2009.

In mid-November 2009 Mr Kent unveiled goals that call for the revenue generated by the company and its bottlers to double to roughly USD 200 billion by 2020, with profit margins increasing too.

In a statement Grupo Modelo reports that during the third quarter, total volume of beer sold reached 13.7 million hl, which represents a 3.2 percent increase compared with the same period last year. Volume in the domestic market totalled 9.4 million hl, which represents a 7.0 percent growth compared with the third quarter of 2008. Domestic brands were up 7.6 percent, benefitting from favourable weather during the quarter as well as the implementation of initiatives to improve execution in the market, the brewer says.

FEMSA, Mexico’s second-largest brewer behind Grupo Modelo, is holding merger talks with several companies. Its beer operations are officially on the table, but analysts expect all of FEMSA – which is also Mexico’s largest Coca-Cola bottler and the owner of the Oxxo convenience-store chain – could ultimately be sold as a single package. FEMSA’s current market capitalisation is USD 9.9 billion.

Mexico’s Government has proposed hiking the excise tax on beer to 28 percent next year from 25 percent, and is also seeking a new 2 percent sales tax on all goods and services as a way of recovering lost revenue from lower oil production, it was reported.