Quote:
Originally posted by Pandora
Ok, forget the phrench - would someone clever please educate me on:
1. why I personally would benefit from assimilation
2. what the impact would be economically if there was one currency for all of North America
3. we're NOT giving up our good beer - no matter how inviting you make the offer
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HAHAHA!!! All your bases are become us!!
Source: Coors, Molson in Merger Talks
Monday, July 19, 2004
NEW YORK — Adolph Coors Co. (RKY), the No. 3 U.S. brewer, is engaged in talks to merge with Canadian brewing company Molson Inc. (search), hoping to create a more powerful rival to market leaders SABMiller and Anheuser-Busch (BUD), sources close to the situation said Monday.
The talks remain tenuous and could break down at any time, the sources said. Still, if successful, the deal would solve expansion issues for both companies, which have watched larger rivals snatch up competitors around the globe the past few years.
Denver-based Coors, in particular, has struggled of late to overcome a health-conscious shift away from beer to wine and distilled spirits. Unlike other brands, Coors has yet to introduce a successful low-carbohydrate beer and the company's Coors Light brand is losing share to SABMiller's Miller Lite and Anheuser-Busch's Bud Light.
Molson, Canada's oldest brewer, has been searching for ways to gain a leg up on rival Labatt, owned by Interbrew. The company bought Brazil's Kaiser brewery in 2002 in an effort to expand its reach into South America, but the venture has proved to be a drain on its profits.
Both Coors and Molson did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
Coors and Molson already have joint ventures to distribute each other's products in the United States and Canada so it is hard to see how a combination would benefit them, said Benj Steinman, editor of industry trade newsletter Beer Marketer's Insights.
"It makes them bigger on the global scene," Steinman said. "But no major synergies are immediately apparent."
Others agreed that while the combination would provide added heft, the deal seemed to provide little growth momentum.
"There would be some short-term cost synergies but long term strategic benefit I don't see a lot of change from the status quo," said Michael Van Aelst, analyst with CIBC World Markets. "They both already have significant relationships with each other in North America, I don't see strategic benefit to this type of a merger."
Several obstacles remain that could prevent the merger from happening, the sources said. The most important perhaps is who would run the combined company.
Coors' founding family controls about one-third of the company's voting stock. But after four generations of being family run, the chain was disrupted recently by Chairman Peter Coors' (search) declaration that he would run for a U.S. Senate seat.
Molson's leadership status is equally in flux. The 218-year old company saw deputy chairman Ian Molson quit in June after a dispute with the company's chairman and his cousin, Eric Molson, splitting the Molson family in two.
Coors shares climbed $3.67, or 5 percent, to $76.69 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange on word of the talks, first reported in the Wall Street Journal. Molson shares climbed 90 cents to C$33.50 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.