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 Is InBev SA in a hostile takeover mode now that Anheuser-Busch Cos. has rejected its $65 per share bid? Many analysts agree that Anheuser-Busch may be too tempting a target to pass up. Additionally, InBev's latest maneuver to oust the companies directors seems hostile, but the Belgian-Brazilian brewer has not formally declared the bid as hostile.
Count Erin Smith, an analyst at Argus Research Co., as a believer that the stage is set for a hostile bid. She wrote Monday in a note that the rejection makes a hostile takeover likely because InBev is unlikely to back down. "We note that Anheuser-Busch does not currently have a poison pill takeover defense, though it does have a means of adopting one. Another option that could derail the takeover, buying the other 50% stake in the Mexican brewer Groupo Modelo, is unlikely, in our view as this stake is controlled by six families that have the right of refusal if one family decides to sell its shares," Smith writes. Smith isn't alone in this line of thinking. "There is absolutely zero doubt that they go hostile," said Rob Mann, an analyst at Collins Stewart in London told a reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Some analysts have even predicted that InBev may have to go as high as $73 per share to close a deal, but Mann thinks it may not matter how high InBev goes. "I get the impression that InBev could bid $80 (a share) and Anheuser would say 'no way.' To me, there is nothing in what Anheuser has said that justifies a higher price," Mann told the Post-Dispatch. Both Anheuser-Busch and InBev are trying to appease Anheuser-Busch's shareholders in opposite tactics. Anheuser-Busch is focusing on change with an aggressive $1 billion cost-cutting plan and InBev is trying to appease shareholders through appraisal of the American icon and focusing on what will stay the same if the company should be acquired. For instance, InBev placed an ad Monday -- "What would not change at Anheuser-Busch" -- by promising that the company will not change under new ownership. - Maria Woehr See The Deal's Anheuser-Busch takes out the knife Categories Deal Video
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