Brito and Dutra filed disclosures in December that they each sold and immediately reacquired tens of millions of their own A-B InBev shares, according to records from the Commission Bancaire, Financiere et des Assurances, or CBFA, the Belgian counterpart to the Securities and Exchange Commission. That has led some analysts and European newspapers to suggest those moves could have been carried out for strategic tax purposes in advance of applications for permanent residency or citizenship in the United States.

Amssoms acknowledged the private stock transactions, but said A-B InBev believes it is “not relevant to further elaborate on the reasons for these trades.”

A significant corporate presence in New York certainly offers some advantages. The city is home to many of the largest advertising agencies, media companies, financial-services firms, and private-investment managers. It is also located between Leuven and St. Louis and offers more direct air travel to A-B InBev units and customers around the globe.

On September 16, Brito led a team of A-B InBev executives to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange to mark the combined company’s first day of trading there. Although the brewer’s ordinary stock continues to trade on Euronext Brussels under the ticker symbol ABI, American investors can now buy and sell A-B InBev American Depository Receipts, or ADRs, under the BUD symbol. Each ADR represents one share of common stock.

That day, Dutra said the New York Stock Exchange listing was “another important step in facilitating broader ownership of Anheuser-Busch InBev shares in the U.S. capital markets and reflects the company’s global presence.”

Belgian newsmagazine Flanders Today reported in January 2009 that A-B InBev “caused shock waves” when it announced a plan to move “a complete layer of senior management to New York.” Most of those approximately 100 jobs were held by Belgians, and the transfer left A-B InBev’s global headquarters with about 70 executives, according to the report.

Last month, Belgian workers blocked the entrances to A-B InBev breweries in the cities of Leuven, Jupille, and Hoegaarden for two weeks in protest of the company’s plan to cut 263 jobs from its 2,700-employee Belgian workforce. On January 21, A-B InBev executives agreed to freeze the cuts as the workers’ action drained beer supplies at European grocery stores and bars.

In St. Louis, nearly all of Anheuser-Busch’s top executives left the company when InBev took over in November 2008, and the office lost several influential voices in the process.

Those departures were quickly followed by plans to eliminate about 2,300 local salaried positions, or nearly 40 percent of the brewer’s previous St. Louis workforce of 6,000.

Yet, A-B InBev stresses that St. Louis retains a vital operational role, and Leuven is the company’s strategic decisionmaking center. Shareholders’ meetings are held in Belgium along with most gatherings of the board of directors and the executive board of management. Brito and his top New York executives also have offices in Belgium. The company’s global strategy and sales team is based there, as are some financial, legal, and technical functions, and A-B InBev’s research and development facility.

“Whether the company is headquartered in New York or Belgium, you still have regional businesses,” Swartzberg said. “I don’t see why a relocated global headquarters to New York would change where the head of North American operations is based.”