Anheuser-Busch claims that Belgian brewer InBev's unsolicited takeover bid isn't just bad for the bottom line, but is an "illegal scheme" that threatens to defraud Anheuser-Busch shareholders if a federal judge doesn't step in, The Associated Press communicated on July 9.

Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. made the claim in a lawsuit filed late Monday, July 7, just hours after InBev SA filed its own motion seeking to oust Anheuser-Busch's board of directors. The lawsuit, filed in St. Louis federal court, claims that InBev is deceiving Anheuser-Busch shareholders about the company's $46 billion takeover bid by concealing a number of facts.

The suit says InBev doesn't have the solid financing to underwrite the deal, as the company claims, and that it has not disclosed that it operates a brewery in Cuba, which could complicate its efforts to operate in the United States.

"Anheuser-Busch is asking the court to prevent InBev from taking any further steps to solicit Anheuser-Busch's shareholders until it provides full and accurate information concerning its proposal," Gary Rutledge, Anheuser-Busch's vice president of legal and government affairs said in a statement Tuesday.

InBev did not return a message seeking comment Tuesday. But the company did make a public appeal for support of its bid ...More Info

Dutch brewer Heineken plans to restate accounts for its newly acquired Scottish & Newcastle (S&N), a spokeswoman said on July 7, partially confirming a report in Britain's Sunday Telegraph, according to Reuters.

"We are assessing the assets we have bought and we are putting them in light of our own approach to reporting and accounting," the spokeswoman said, adding the firm was aiming to inform the market of any relevant changes at the end of August.

Shares in the world's third largest brewer slipped more than 3 percent on Monday following the report over the weekend, but some analysts did not expect a restatement to have any major impact on the company's overall results.

"It's not such a drama in itself," said Petercam analyst Kris Kippers. "If you look at S&N, it doesn't weigh out that much for the total company so it will probably only have an effect of about 2 or 3 percent on the overall numbers."

"It's better for Heineken to do it now than do it within six or 12 months."

The Sunday Telegraph reported the firm is set to restate profit for S&N by as much as 10 percent after finding discrepancies in its accounts, citing analysts.

Heineken's spokeswoman would not ...More Info

Tomáš Brányik, António A. Vicente, Pavel Dostálek and José A. Teixeira

Abstract

J. Inst. Brew. 114(1), 3-13, 2008 The attractive prospect of a continuous beer fermentation system consists mostly of the accelerated transformation of wort into beer. Although continuous beer fermentation has been studied as a promising technology for several decades, the number of industrial applications is still limited. The major obstacle hindering the extensive industrial exploitation of this technology is the difficulty in achieving the correct balance of sensory compounds in the short time typical for continuous systems. This paper offers an integral view on the particularities of continuous systems, which may impart beer a sensorial character distinct from conventionally fermented counterparts. The main groups of flavour active compounds are discussed from the perspective of possible control strategies by means of process parameters and strain selection ... Load full article, 6 pages, 456 Kb, PDF file