And then there was Sazerac

In 2008, with the Brazilians of InBev plotting their hostile takeover of Anheuser-Busch, workers, vendors, and St. Louis neighbors of the mighty macrobrewer took solace in the certainty that its family owners would never sell off their birthright. As Carlos Brito and his merry band of corporate brewing raiders completed their conquest of the King of Beers, casual onlookers realized what the interlopers had already sniffed out nearly a year prior: by the 21st century, the Busch family didn’t actually control very much of A-B. From William Knoedelseder’s Bitter Brew (emphasis mine throughout):

By that point, A-B had also done away with a corporate poison-pill provision designed to prevent hostile takeovers, and another that blocked the firm’s board from being replaced in one fell swoop at a single shareholders’ meeting. Brito was by all accounts a brilliant tactician, but the Busches made it easy. The takeover was unfathomable until it wasn’t.

Nearly 20 years later, another august (ahem) American beverage-alcohol behemoth is in the throes of its own mergers-and-acquisitions mayhem, and the preferences of yet another dynastic drinks-industry family are germane to the proceedings. Their surname even begins with the same letter. The Browns are not the Busches, Brown-Forman Corporation is not Anheuser-Busch, and The Sazerac Company is not InBev. But with a potential “merger of equals” between Pernod Ricard and Louisville’s liquor colossus officially kiboshed as of yesterday afternoon, the brand collector of New Orleans is the only corporate suitor known to still be circling B-F—and reportedly with a $15-billion check, at that. It’s an unfathomable takeover in its own right, for reasons I’ll get into below. But on the advice of history, let’s do some fathoming, just in case.

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