urbanSTL

publiceye wrote:Arguably, this could be the largest injection of private cash into the region in years? decades? centuries?

Definitely centuries. The fur trading business was never quite that lucrative.

JMedwick wrote:^Perhaps not for St. Louisians, but for some, it made them ridiculously wealthy.

Good margins on opium too.

Urban Elitist wrote:^It is beyond me why many union members have such a sense of entitlement. They truly believe they should be guaranteed 70k a year to sweep floors or stick labels onto bottles. In todays global economy, they can forget about this nonsense continuing much longer.

I agree a lot of these union folks were overpaid, but so are CEOs that get multi-millions while the company underperforms.

Urban Elitist wrote:^It is beyond me why many union members have such a sense of entitlement. They truly believe they should be guaranteed 70k a year to sweep floors or stick labels onto bottles. In todays global economy, they can forget about this nonsense continuing much longer.

yet nobody seems to have a problem with, for example, baseball players making upwards of 3 million a year FOR PLAYING A GAME (stop buying tickets and merchandise!). god forbid the union workers believe they are entitled to a comfortable living wage for making A-B a shitload of money. if you're so jealous of their sweet deal go get a job with A-B ... oh, wait.

Managers also had no pressure to stay in line with budgets. I know of some people that would "do work really slow on the weekdays" so they then came in on the weekENDS to "finish up work" so they got OT.

Thankfully these were never my friends.



If I was a manager and I saw ONE hour of OT, I would question the person on why that occured, even more put in policies that required manager signoff to get OT.

^and one could argue the overpaid AB employee living (and spending) all around us is better for the economy than the overpaid ball player or CEO who is spending his cashola in Beverly Hills or overseas.

urban_dilettante wrote:
yet nobody seems to have a problem with, for example, baseball players making upwards of 3 million a year FOR PLAYING A GAME (stop buying tickets and merchandise!).

Everyone I know thinks those ball players are recockulous for getting paid that much, but the difference is that they ARE the best, and somehow we do keep paying money to see them.



With these janitors it is a little different. There is no competition. It is like the MLB not allowing anyone else join the league even though they are clearly the best ball player.



Seattle Port workers are the same in theory as AB. They are a union and you move up the chain by seniority. Once you have been there the longest you have the opportunity to become a Crane operator. (Work 2 hours, Off 2 hours, Work 2 hours, Off 2 hours) You also get the most pay.

The main economic driver that regulates the plush job is that if you make 3 mistakes you are fired.



If i was operating my own port I would want the BEST crane operator on there. I dont care if they are 2 years into the company or 20.



And yes, currently AB is mostly seniority based, instead of performance.

urban_dilettante wrote:

Urban Elitist wrote:^It is beyond me why many union members have such a sense of entitlement. They truly believe they should be guaranteed 70k a year to sweep floors or stick labels onto bottles. In todays global economy, they can forget about this nonsense continuing much longer.

yet nobody seems to have a problem with, for example, baseball players making upwards of 3 million a year FOR PLAYING A GAME (stop buying tickets and merchandise!). god forbid the union workers believe they are entitled to a comfortable living wage for making A-B a shitload of money. if you're so jealous of their sweet deal go get a job with A-B ... oh, wait.

Baseball players salaries are determined by market forces, that's why people have less of a problem with that. They have an ability that few other people have, thus their salary.



When unions inflate salaries above the market rate, all that happens is the company cannot compete on a global scale, and it is eventually bought out(AB) or starts to shut down plants and the like(GM).



Union workers "believing they are entitled to a comfortable living wage" is not the problem. The problem is 70k is not "a comfortable living wage", it is excessive for placing stickers on bottles. 40k a year for that job would be fair and a comfortable wage.



I should add that union workers are paid to perform a duty, they are not entitled to more money based on the company "making boatloads of money". Would they accept a pay cut if the company began to loose money? My guess is no. If they want to make money based on company performance, they should buy stock.



Until unions recognize that we are now in a global economy, they are only hurting themselves by demanding these ridiculous salaries as their jobs will just be either shipped overseas or they will be laid off after a buyout for cheaper labor.

jlblues wrote:

JCity wrote:Does St. Louis really have a chance of landing the headquarters? would be great. dreams...

Yes. A chance...somewhere between 0 and 5%.

Although I realize you're probably right, I'd much rather see our city's leaders setting their sights high instead of selling St. Louis short and wallowing in the past, which is what most St. Louisans are generally accustomed to doing when something like this happens.



Hopefully other politicians can follow Mayor Slay's lead and work to establish a positive dialogue with (Anheuser-Busch) InBev CEO Carlos Brito. Even if the chance of landing the global headquarters is slim to none, our leaders should be working overtime to ensure that St. Louis gains jobs overall from this merger/buyout, even if we can all agree that some fat should probably be trimmed at various levels over on Pestalozzi Street.

Shimmy wrote:Well, to be fair, one could also argue that one who spends time during the workday sitting at the computer in an office on an internet forum is overpaid. Not taking shots, just saying.

LOW BLOW! Admin, Ban that person!



I defend myself by stating the following:

1. I do feel bad by going on the forums, but when I click out, I work twice as hard to get back to "where i was"

2. I never take an hour lunch, always less.

3. I don’t take smoke breaks

4. I use this forum for future opportunities that might one day fruit a "client"

5. In business, connections are key, and it seems like a lot of people on this forum can one day come in handy.

6. I always ensure my performance is on or exceeding expectations.

7. Better here than TMZ.com

^^^^^^^^^^^^^



whoa, union bashers, it just got conservative in here again.



while I don't at all agree with bottle-label-applicators getting paid $27/hr (not including fringe multipliers), this problem was only magnified by the nepotism and good ol boy network bullshite occurring among the white collar ranks; which is what I was crabbing about yesterday. Quite frankly, it's becoming more and more obvious that A-B needed to be bought out to be anywhere near competitive on a global scale.



The StL Biz Journal article detailing the extent in which Busch family members (often thrice removed) where involved in their main business, as well as the distributing network made me vom (only a little in my mouth, of course). Also, Morningstar gave A-B a D rating for the independence of its Board Members.



My point: all of that nepotism and glad-handing certainly undermines true, clean competition, and (apparently and quite obviously) works against the health of a company. Pure speculation of course but mgmt probably threw so much cash at the blue collar peeps so they wouldn't complain about all of the crap occurring among the brass.



This is becoming a big fat cockroach thrust into the light.



One more rhetorical question: Assuming the owners of A-B stock are properly diversified, and ignoring upper mgmt that exercise options, how would any of them actually become that wealthy? I mean, isn't the general rule of thumb to only have roughly 10% of assets in your own company?



Source: entire June 20-26 issue of StL Biz Journal

WoooooW, hold on buddy! If anything CEO's and Professional atheletes are underpaid! (sure there are exceptions to this rule)

goat314 wrote:

publiceye wrote:

That history and all those connections make most St. Louisans, including me, face this merger with mixed feelings.



We do not yet know what impact the inevitable cuts at A-B will have on the employees, on their retirements, on A-B’s corporate philanthropy. Having the top decision makers live across the world instead of across the street is going to change things. Obviously, one of my first goals will be to try to convince InBev, which loves to cut costs, to move to St. Louis where pretty much everything is cheaper than in Belgium.



On the other hand, $70 cash a share for A-B stock is going to mean a tremendous transfer of wealth into St. Louis – which I expect will mean an up-tick in the purchase and sale of St. Louis real estate, automobiles, and a lot of other things.



I am very committed to working with both companies to make sure that the merged company remains a great corporate citizen and a great employer for thousands of St. Louisans.

I think I might have bolded the sentence above instead. Tens of thousands of St. Louis families own AB stock. Lots of it. Arguably, this could be the largest injection of private cash into the region in years? decades? centuries?

Thats assuming that they spend they investment money into the city or the county. They could say screw St. Louis and move to Florida or move into a big mansion out in the country.

Funny, I was thinking the same thing.

zink wrote:
4. I use this forum for future opportunities that might one day fruit a "client"

Wouldn't it be a lot less time-consuming to simply put an ad in the back pages of the RFT?

jlblues wrote:Assuming this deal goes through, I think there is actually a very good chance that A-B-I will move their global HQ soon, and a decent chance that the new location will be in the United States. So, St. Louis and Missouri should absolutely be pulling out all the stops to try and land it.



As I posted in another thread though, if a global HQ relocation to the U.S. does come to pass, I'm afraid A-B-I would follow the model of Boeing and MillerCoors and seek a neutral HQ location in a global business capital like Chicago or New York, where they can of course also land more incentives (man, Chicago would really be a slap in the face! ).



Ironically, St. Louis might be better off, i.e. retain more upper-level management jobs, if the global A-B-I HQ is not in North America.

My thoughts exactly. I hope we'll see some swift and decisive action from our leaders soon even though I know the chances of pulling something like this off are quite slim. If InBev can be convinced they'll be better off with the global headquarters for A-B-I in the United States, St. Louis must attempt to position itself as the front-runner. And in more ways than one, as you pointed out, I think we'd be better off with global headquarters in Leuven instead of elsewhere in the United States.

seems to me *if* they were to move their Global HQ to the US (which I don't expect) they would be foolish not to put it in St. Louis. After all, they have gone on and on about how they want the goodwill associated with the Bud brand. Moving ABI HQ to some random spot like Dallas wouldn't do much for that. Most likely they will keep it in Belgium, but if they start looking to move STL needs to fight like hell to get it.

southsidepride wrote:Most likely they will keep it in Belgium, but if they start looking to move STL needs to fight like hell to get it.

Brussels is kind of a backwater, and Leuven is a suburb of Brussels - so it's kind of like the St. Charles of Europe. As David Nicklaus pointed out in his blog, there might not even be a country of Belgium much longer. Plus, taxes there are insane. Employees aren't very productive - they work 32 hours a week/44 weeks a year. And you think companies in the U.S. have problems with unions? Try laying off or firing employees in Belgium...

Yesterday, I noticed that a Stella Artois ad in a recent magazine listed St. Louis as its base for distributions. If InBev already has a STL presence (where is it currently, btw?), you'd think a global HQ in Ballpark Village would have increased savings.

jlblues wrote:

ThreeOneFour wrote:

jlblues wrote: Yes. A chance...somewhere between 0 and 5%.

Although I realize you're probably right, I'd much rather see our city's leaders setting their sights high instead of selling St. Louis short and wallowing in the past, which is what most St. Louisans are generally accustomed to doing when something like this happens.



Hopefully other politicians can follow Mayor Slay's lead and work to establish a positive dialogue with (Anheuser-Busch) InBev CEO Carlos Brito. Even if the chance of landing the global headquarters is slim to none, our leaders should be working overtime to ensure that St. Louis gains jobs overall from this merger/buyout, even if we can all agree that some fat should probably be trimmed at various levels over on Pestalozzi Street.

Assuming this deal goes through, I think there is actually a very good chance that A-B-I will move their global HQ soon, and a decent chance that the new location will be in the United States. So, St. Louis and Missouri should absolutely be pulling out all the stops to try and land it.



As I posted in another thread though, if a global HQ relocation to the U.S. does come to pass, I'm afraid A-B-I would follow the model of Boeing and MillerCoors and seek a neutral HQ location in a global business capital like Chicago or New York, where they can of course also land more incentives (man, Chicago would really be a slap in the face! ).



Ironically, St. Louis might be better off, i.e. retain more upper-level management jobs, if the global A-B-I HQ is not in North America.





On another topic: Has anyone seen a reasonably reliable estimate of the percentage of shares of A-B owned by St. Louisans? I would think it could be as much as 15%, which would mean several billion dollars to St. Louisans. Of course, most of that would simply be reinvested (still, lots of transaction fees for local brokerages ), but it is interesting nonetheless.

Interesting tidbit on Mayor Slay's blog regarding a possible HQ move for InBev...

We do not yet know what impact the inevitable cuts at A-B will have on the employees, on their retirements, on A-B’s corporate philanthropy. Having the top decision makers live across the world instead of across the street is going to change things. Obviously, one of my first goals will be to try to convince InBev, which loves to cut costs, to move to St. Louis where pretty much everything is cheaper than in Belgium.

Not sure there's really anything there, but oh man that would be huge. I bet all those relocated Belgian's would much rather live in city housing stock than suburban housing stock too!

Interesting article in the BJ about the money behind InBev. The Brazilians definitely run the company, which is another reason to expect the HQ will move from Belgium sooner or later.

On the afternoon of June 2, in a Tampa, Fla., hotel, August Busch III met with Jorge Paulo Lemann and Marcell Herrmann Telles. Lemann and Telles were there on behalf of Belgian brewing giant InBev to make Busch aware of InBev's intent to acquire Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc.



While Carlos Brito is broadly known as the face of InBev, few are aware of the powerful men calling the shots for Brito. Behind the scenes at InBev, the company's machinations are orchestrated largely by three billionaires from Brazil -- Lemann, Telles and Carlos Alberto da Veiga Sicupira -- who are directors of InBev.



In December 2005, shortly after the merger of Brazil-based Ambev and Belgium-based Interbrew, the contract of InBev's Chief Executive Officer John Brock was not renewed, and Brito was promoted to take his place. It is widely understood that Brito's appointment was engineered by Lemann, who is one of Brazil's wealthiest men. In fact, all of Brito's actions at InBev are thought to be mainly based on the influence of Lemann, one of the company's top shareholders.



Combined, Lemann, Telles and Sicupira are believed to control about 25 percent of InBev stock. The three also control Lojas Americanas, a retailer (frequently referred to as "the Wal-mart of Brazil") whose stock price soared 67 percent in 2006. Last year, the retailer bought all of the Blockbuster movie rental stores in Brazil.

Source