It’s a sign of how bad things are that a consultant has to tell you to romance the opposite side’s management. This was apparently the fate of August Busch III (hereafter “der Alte Kaiser”) when he was trying to buy the original minority stake in Grupo Modelo. So he took Modelo’s executives deep-sea fishing in Cabo, which is a good recovery from his earlier obliviousness (but not for hangovers because of the boat’s rocking, trust me).
It’s a sign that things are even worse when you hook a marlin but then decide you’re needed back in the United States. August III, doing something that only an old monarch can think was appropriate, passed the rod off to a Modelo chieftain, Valentin Diez, and ordered him to bring the fish in promptly.* Which is just about impossible.
The net result of the botched expedition was a marlin pardoned by Busch’s imperiousness and a group of Modelo executives permanently embittered against Anheuser for the same reason. Diez told friends that much, while other participants described August III’s attitude “you’ll do it my way or you die.” David Kesmodel thinks of this debacle as the beginning of a rift between the two brewers, the emnity that culminated in Modelo shooting down August IV’s pleas to merge and avoid the rough wooing of InBev. We just think it’s a priceless anecdote about how not to run a company.
*We’ve embarassed ourselves enough times in front of Cabo’s sportfishing guides to know that it’s a rookie mistake to rush bringing the marlin in. You don’t have to be Brian Hunter to know that marlins, like livers, fight for hours before they’re beaten.
–DealBreaker’s second best fisherman, Andrew.
InBev
We noted yesterday that InBev officially announced its attempt to oust the entire Anheuser Busch board, but the dynastic politics of the St. Louis brewer always add a bit of color to the blandest corporate proceedings.
One interesting twist is that InBev nominated Adolphus Busch IV, uncle to August IV. While the Buschs’ entire holdings are less than 5% of the company, meaning that Adolphus isn’t going to swing the deal by himself, we appreciate a good family drama, preferably about uncles turning on their own dynasty.
Adolphus was the author of an earlier letter to the Anheuser-Busch board that pleaded with directors to accept, or at least consider, InBev’s offer. He stated that this was the only way that “Budweiser will once again be truly the ‘King of Beers.’” We like the melodramatic flourish at the end, but we would have begun the letter somewhat differently: “Now is the winter of our discontent, Made glorious summer by this sun of Bud.”
-senior royal family correspondent Andrew
