DOJ OKs ABIB

From the New York Times Business Briefing, 14 November 2008:

Belgium’s InBev cleared the last hurdle to buying Anheuser-Busch, creating the world’s largest brewer, when it gained United States antitrust approval [Department of Justice] for the $52 billion deal after agreeing to sell its Labatt USA subsidiary. <...>which includes Rolling Rock beer

And this from Bloomberg, in which the reasoning by the Department of Justice is parochially fascinating:

InBev agreed to sell Labatt USA after the government concluded that the combination would eliminate competition in western New York between InBev's Labatt Blue and Labatt Light and Anheuser-Busch's Budweiser and Bud Light brands.

Labatt's overall share of the U.S. beer market is about 2 percent. <...> [But] together, the Labatt and Budweiser brands would account for 45 percent of the Buffalo and Rochester markets and 41 percent of beer sales in Syracuse. Antitrust enforcers said that would lead to higher prices

Even though regulators in China and the United Kingdom have yet to okay the purchase, an unidentified source close to the situation says that InBev's purchase of Anheuser-Busch will be consummated next week.