And the winner is … Constellation
That’s it, then. And what a saga it has been. It’s taken Anheuser-Busch and its successor, AB-InBev, a total of twenty years to acquire the Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo. However, it’s not been so much a case of “patience pays off” (the Brazilians) as of “patience worn thin” (the Mexicans). Ever since the Brazilian-Belgian brewer InBev bought its U.S. competitor Anheuser-Busch in 2008, a full takeover of Modelo was merely a matter of time. The final three-way transaction between AB-InBev, Modelo and Constellation Brands had some surprising twists and turns, especially when Constellation Brands became the white knight that saved AB-InBev from the fangs of the U.S. antitrust watchdogs. How could this happen? Indeed, the question is: how did U.S. wine company Constellation manage to turn itself from twice-saviour of Modelo into Modelo’s ultimate gravedigger?
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