It’s a sign of the times for an American icon to fall into the hands of a cash-rich foreign buyer. There is a lot of emotion here, as the harsh words of 30-year employee Dave Liszweski show. But there are some pragmatic lessons for investors, too.

“The good Lord was sold out for 30 pieces of silver. We were sold out for $70 a share.”

- Dave Liszewski, longtime Anheuser-Busch (BUD) employee

What to make of the Budweiser buyout, now that the Anheuser-Busch family has accepted Inbev’s sweetened $52 billion offer?

In St. Louis, the home of Bud since 1876, the reaction is deeply personal. There is great concern that the city’s health and well-being will be affected by the new owner’s cost-cutting. Plants could be shut down… jobs lost… local outreach programs and long-standing traditions gone.

Opal Henderson, a 78-year-old salvage yard owner, asks the question on many Arch City residents’ minds: “Why can’t those foreigners just stay at home and leave us what we have?”

Henderson channels the broader reaction of Bud drinkers everywhere. From a certain point of view, we are all from St. Louis on this. How could something so local, so basic, so fundamentally American, wind up in the hands of those frou-frou Europeans?

Older Than You Think

But from another point of view the ranting is overdone, and a bit hypocritical to boot. There is a certain irony in Bud going back to Europe, for example, because that’s where it came from in the first place.

The name “Budweiser,” known as Budweis to the Germans, goes all the way back to a little Czech town called Ceske Budovice. Beer has been brewed there for more than 740 years — ever since the middle ages — and has been casually referred to as Budweiser for most of that time. (In the Czech Republic, it’s normal practice for beer to be referred to by town or region of origin.)

So as you can see, the Budweiser name has a little bit of age to it. When the American version came into existence in 1876 — roughly six centuries after the Czechs got it going — the new brewers had the good sense to pay homage to the old. (Having studied in the Czech Republic in the mid-‘90s, I can furthermore assure you — eight centuries of practice have paid off. The Czechs truly know how to make the best beer in the world. For a poor college student, it tasted even better at 50 cents a glass.)

Just Business

I asked Sara Nunnally, our globetrotting foreign markets expert, what she thought of the deal from an international perspective. How does this thing look from Belgium (where Inbev, the acquirer, is based)?

“Well, you know, Justice,” Sara replied, “$52 billion just ain’t as much as it used to be. You’ve heard the news about the dollar hitting a record low against the euro, right? So that $52 billion is now only 32.5 billion euros. Just last year, this deal would have cost InBev 37.7 billion euros.”

Taking advantage of a strong euro made sense. But what else? I asked Sara why she thought Inbev wanted Anheuser-Busch so badly.

“My honest opinion?” she replied again. “InBev doesn’t care as much about Bud as it does about marketing its own signature beers here in the U.S. Not to mention the ‘back door’ into Asian markets with Anheuser-Busch’s stake in Chinese brewer Tsingtao. And even though InBev has already made inroads in Latin American markets, Busch’s stake in Grupo Modelo, makers of Corona and Modelo beers, certainly makes up a big part of those synergies the suits have been talking about.”

Ah, yes. So it’s all about profits and market expansion… using Bud’s massive U.S. distribution network to get more upscale European beers into the hands of pretentious American drinkers. And maybe about using the economies of scale that come from being the biggest brewer in the world. (A combined Anheuser/Inbev would take that crown; it currently rests with SABMiller in London.)

That all made perfect sense to me, being one of those pretentious upscale types myself. I’ll take a Pilsner Urquel or a Stella Artois over the rest of the pack any day. Not for the label, you see, but for the taste. (I’ll stop there before the pro-Bud hate mail starts rolling in…)

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