bloggingbuyouts

InBev, the Belgian brewer, today hiked its unsolicited bid for Anheuser-Busch Cos. (NYSE: BUD) by a whopping $5 a share, making it all but certain that the King of Beers will sell -- unless members of the board of directors have spent too much time sampling their own product.

The $50 billion offer represents a substantial premium over where Anheuser-Busch has recently traded. InBev clearly wants to avoid the hostile takeover it's threatened. It has vowed to keep its U.S. operations based in the company's hometown of St. Louis. The average drinker of Budweiser probably will not notice a difference in the taste of their favorite brew, which may or may not be a good thing depending on one's beer snobbery.

Shareholders, including Warren Buffett, are ready to head to the exits. The stock, which is up 17% this year, is trading up in pre-market trading. The company has little choice but to take the bid. No other logical buyers exist and I would be surprised if private equity players would be willing to top InBev's offer.

About the only potential losers in this acquisition may be media companies.

Advertising salesmen are probably all holding their breaths wondering whether the new owners of Anheuser-Busch will turn off the money spigot that has made Budweiser one of the most iconic brands in the world. Imagine a weekend baseball game without a Bud commercial? You have to wonder whether InBev will be as enthused to spend big bucks on the Super Bowl as well.

Politicians may lament that Anheuser-Busch is no longer U.S. owned. Then again neither is Miller. BloggingStocks writer Carol Vinzant did an exhaustive piece yesterday listing about two dozen American icons owned abroad.

I guess beer drinkers will have to stick to craft brewers if they want to support U.S. beer makers. That may be short-sighted though. Thanks to free trade, the world has become more global and there is nothing we can do to change it.

Cisco Systems Inc. on Thursday announced a $100 million agreement to buy venture-backed Securent Inc., a three-year-old company that makes security software to help companies better manage different tiers of application users.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Securent, which has 57 employees, has received venture financing from Greylock Partners of San Mateo, Calif., and Onset Ventures of Menlo Park, Calif. Securent makes so-called policy management software, which advances security beyond basic gatekeeper, or single sign-on, technology to enable companies to manage different security levels for different employees.

Continue reading Cisco grabs security software maker in $100M deal at Tech Confidential

Today's headlines that IBM (NYSE: IBM) Is looking at beefing up its security offerings raises the question if management would acquire Israel-based Check Point Software (NASDAQ: CHKP). Val Rahmani, IBM's general manager of infrastructure management for global technology services, sees security as a key to growth. Val said, "We're looking at a lot of different companies right now, as we always do in a number of different spaces within security."

Until now, the thought on the Street was that Check Point was going to continue as a stand-alone company, but with IBM on the prowl, it may be too much for CEO Gil Schwed to resist. Check Point currently trades at a market cap of $5.53 billion, and an acquisition would certainly come with a much higher price tag. Based on valuation, it would take between $7-8 billion to buy the company. For deep-pocketed IBM, that's not too high a price. For Schwed, a takeover at that price would tough to reject, and it would break all records for M&A of an Israeli company.

Based on IBM's track record, I would doubt that it is going to try to grow its own security business organically; rather, it will most probably purchase a serious player. Stay tuned to see if that player will be Check Point.

Disclosure: Writer holds a position in CHKP. He has no other position in any stock mentioned as of 11/2/07.

Aaron Katsman is the lead Portfolio Manager and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. and Senior Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com.

In a move that may help video game giant Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) compete more effectively with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)'s new Halo 3, the company has agreed to buy two game publishers.

According to The Wall Street Journal, EA will purchase VG Holdings Corp., the parent company of game makers BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios, the studios behind the nice ultra-violent game Destroy All Humans! The companies were owned by Elevation Partners; according to the Journal, "The deal is the first time Elevation, which counts U2 singer Bono among its partners, has cashed out of one of its investments."

EA said it will pay as much as $620 million to VG Holdings and $155 million in equity to certain employees.

Electronic Arts could use the help. Halo 3 sold $300 million in its first week on the market. EA does $700 million in a typical quarter. And games like Destroy All Humans! give the company a product to attract young male buyers of games in which large numbers of humans and aliens are destroyed in short order.

At $59, EA's stock is near its 52-year top. The new purchase could help push it higher.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

For the last 24 hours or so, rumors that Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) may be looking to place a bid for Research In Motion, Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM) have been floating to the top of the M&A bowl. It's easy to note that rumors about RIM happen every week, but what makes this one so different? Many, many things.

Microsoft's recent attention to making its Windows Mobile platform entrenched into the market for handheld Smartphones continues to indicate how highly the company places mobile technology in its future growth strategy. By now, it's pretty obvious that companies like Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT), Microsoft and Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) all believe that the future of the internet is in the mobile customer's hands. Yes, we'll always have wireless-enabled laptop computers, but for those growing masses who want the office in their pocket, small Smartphones and like devices are just now beginning to see widespread popularity. It will blossom into a huge market from here.

Unless the price is just too high, Microsoft's acquisition of the best-known name in mobile computing would allow it to gain a very loyal customer base almost instantly, but the company could not just dump RIM's exclusive software and email "push" capability in favor of its own. Both RIM and Microsoft now have systems to automatically push received email to customers in the mobile field in real-time. They are direct competitors.

By buying its largest competitor in this space, Microsoft would own the market for Smartphone-based applications and push email, ahead of European-based Symbian. Microsoft's only problem: RIM's market cap is nearly $47 billion. But with rumors fueling Google's entry into the wireless space in full force soon, Microsoft may again be forced to act in the endless arm wrestling with the internet search giant.