All the Pretty Horses Can't Stop This Deal

Beer doesn't have a warm and fuzzy image -- although drinking enough of it can make you feel warm and fuzzy.

So it is not surprising that the family-friendly Clydesdale horses have emerged as the symbol of resistance to a takeover of Anheuser Busch.

The big horses are a powerful image. A commercial shown during this year's Super Bowl, about a horse who first fails to make the team of Clydesdale that pull the Budweiser wagon, was the best-liked spot of the game, according to USA Today.

The Clydesdales have been a part of the Budweiser brand since some pulled the first cases of Bud out of the St. Louis brewery when Prohibition was repealed on April 7, 1933. The horses are now being repeatedly invoked by those who fear the loss of jobs and the foreign takeover of an American icon if InBev, a Brazilian-Belgian brewing giant, succeeds in its bid.

The Save AB website features a patriotic commercial with the Clydesdales that ran after the September 11 attacks. "We remember that the Clydesdales stood with us. Will InBev?" the site asks. A speaker in an anti-takeover rally in St. Louis over the weekend brandished a stuffed Clydesdale toy.

Senator Kit Bond of Missouri, who has written to the Federal Trade Commission in opposition to a deal, told the Associated Press: "Having the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales being replaced with two Belgian ponies and a cart filled with beer does not thrill me."

David Sweet, a commentator on MSBNC, said of the Clydesdales: "These 2,000-pound horses have become an American institution. It's tough to imagine they could be used to promote a beer called Leffe."

It may be impolite to point out that the Clydesdale itself is, well, an import. They are hard-working farm horses, first bred in Clydesdale, Scotland, from native horses and Flemish stallions. Yes, Flemish, as in Belgian.

But horses may not be enough to drag InBev away from Anheuser Busch. Its offer of $65 per share in cash represents a 35 percent premium to Anheuser's 30-day average stock price before deal speculation emerged. The Busch family has a 4 percent stake; Warren Buffett who does not take horses into consideration when making investment decisions, has a 5 percent stake.

As Andrew Ross Sorkin points out in his DealBook column in the New York Times:

"In the end, Anheuser-Busch's defenses are weak. There's no staggered board and shareholders can act by written consent -- meaning they can oust the board at any time quite easily. But that's not the real point. The Busches have done a miserable job of managing the company, and shareholders have suffered."

It's too late to close the barn doors.