Breakingviews

AB InBev moves fast to keep Mexico prize

By Quentin Webb

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Anheuser-Busch InBev is moving fast to save its Mexican ambitions. The world’s biggest brewer has rejigged its $20 billion buyout of Grupo Modelo two weeks after regulators objected, worrying that U.S. drinkers would suffer. In response, AB InBev is relinquishing any claim to Modelo’s beers stateside. That could prevent a long legal fight, while keeping the deal’s rationale largely intact.

Japan tensions rewrite China shopping lists

By Katrina Hamlin

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

China’s buying habits have taken on an air of the patriotic, at least where Japan is concerned. As tensions rose last year over who owns a group of remote islands, sales of Japanese cars and arrivals of Chinese tourists showed a marked slowdown. Even Chinese acquisitions of Japanese companies fell in the last quarter of 2012.

Liberty pushes envelope for post-crisis M&A debt

By Christopher Hughes
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. 

Liberty Global’s $23 billion offer for Virgin Media marks a turning point in post-crisis deal finance. This cable-TV mega-merger has most of the hallmarks of the pre-crisis boom. The target’s shareholders are being paid partly in their own cash, which will be extracted from Virgin Media through some ambitious financing operations. Leverage may not be pushed up to pre-crisis highs, but this is still a big moment.

AB InBev setback may hasten last round of beer M&A

By Quentin Webb

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

A deal setback for Anheuser-Busch InBev may ironically hasten a last round of consolidation in beer. The U.S. Department of Justice opposes AB InBev’s $20 billion plan to buy out the other half of Grupo Modelo, the Mexican group behind Corona. The world’s largest brewer may yet find a workable compromise. But if not, an obvious plan B exists: the long-rumoured takeout of SABMiller.

Caterpillar’s Chinese lesson: dig below top line

By John Foley

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

As a company that makes excavators, Caterpillar should know the importance of digging. The U.S. machine maker has taken a $580 million write-down on a Chinese mining equipment producer it bought less than a year ago, erasing three quarters of that deal’s value. The accounting fraud that Caterpillar claims to have found at ERA Mining may not have been visible at the time of the purchase. But the low quality of its target’s rapid growth was.

China’s role in Rio Tinto chief’s downfall

By John Foley

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Rio Tinto’s $38 billion purchase of aluminium producer Alcan has cost the company billions of dollars in write-downs, leading chief executive Tom Albanese to fall on his sword. But it’s not all Albanese’s fault. Rio’s biggest customer, China, shares some of the blame.

Europe brings the pain for UPS and TNT

By Quentin Webb

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Acquisitive companies beware: Joaquin Almunia is not always interested in the bigger picture. The European competition commissioner has nixed his second transatlantic mega-merger in a year, signalling he would block TNT’s 5.2 billion euro takeover by U.S. rival UPS. He had consigned the Deutsche Boerse – NYSE deal to the scrapheap in February, 2012. Both times, the companies argued fruitlessly that they were subject to wider competitive forces than those considered in the commission’s analysis, which defined the markets in question rather narrowly. Both times, the EU competition czar failed to be impressed.

CDB highlights China’s dysfunctional finance

By John Foley

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

China Development Bank is on a roll. The policy lender raised 1.2 trillion yuan ($193 billion) in net domestic funds in 2012, according to Reuters data. The proceeds funded high-profile foreign takeovers, allowed U.S.-listed Chinese companies to go private, and helped Indian billionaire Anil Ambani refinance bonds. Such activities have less to do with development than with China’s financial dysfunction.

Avis gives Zipcar a faster lane to profitability

By Antony Currie
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Avis Budget is giving Zipcar a faster lane to profitability. Selling to the mainstream car rental giant for $500 million means a 32 percent loss for those who bought shares in Zipcar’s 2011 initial public offering. But it will allow the car-sharing company to boost its margins by tapping into Avis’s underused fleet.

A merger arb writes to Santa

By Donder und Blitzen

The authors are guest columnists for Reuters Breakingviews. The opinions expressed are their own.

After another thin and bumpy year for betting on M&A, one desperate European merger arbitrageur wrote to Santa. Breakingviews obtained a copy: