LEUVEN, Belgium -- InBev shareholders overwhelmingly voted in favor of buying U.S. rival Anheuser-Busch on Monday in a $52 billion deal to create the global leader in brewing, said Reuters. Some 99.99% of shareholders at an extraordinary meeting backed the company's vision of combining its brands such as Stella Artois and Beck's with Anheuser's top-selling Budweiser.
In total 418,843,809 of the 418,874,509 shareholders at the meeting at InBev's headquarters voted in favor of the purchase. The deal is expected to be closed by the end of the year.
Shareholders also supported changing the combined company's name to Anheuser-Busch InBev and Anheuser CEO August Busch IV's entry to the board.
A proposal to increase the company's capital by up to $10 billion was also adopted in a series of resolutions recommended by the company's board.
All the necessary steps to raise the extra $9.8 billion needed to cover a bridge loan and complete the deal had already been taken and it was a question of when the best time was to proceed, InBev CEO Carlos Brito said.
"It could be before or after closing. We have an equity bridge in place that gives us flexibility to tap the market at the appropriate time," Brito told the meeting.
Just ahead of the vote Brito, sought again to reassure labor unions in the United States that the merged entity would not close any of the 12 brewing operations there, provided there were no new state and federal level taxes or "unforeseen circumstances."
Labor unions feared that A-B InBev would tap cheaper brewing capacity being installed over the border in Mexico by Grupo Modelo at the expense of the merged company. "There are currently no plans to access Grupo Modelo capacity on a contract or any other basis," Brito told the shareholder meeting.
Anheuser owns half of Corona brewer Modelo, but does not have voting control.
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