It did not take long for InBev's predatory overtures towards Anheuser-Busch to be turned into an assault on the American nation. The Save AB website, which has garnered more than 8,000 signatures, compares the Budweiser brewer's place in the American pysche to “baseball and apple pie”, adding: “With your help we can fight the foreign invasion of AB. We will fight to protect this American treasure. We will take to the internet, to the streets, to the marble halls of our capitals, whatever it takes to stop the invasion.”

It is hard to see such flag-waving getting much traction, however, particularly if the Stella Artois brewer ups the ante from $65 a share to something nearer $70. While the Busch family speaks for less than 4 per cent of the shares, hedge funds are believed to have snapped up about 15 per cent and Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha, is sitting on about 5 per cent. For such people cash will always win out over apple pie.

InBev's fluffy comments about what a great company AB is should also, like a Corona beer, be taken with a pinch of salt. Ever since Belgium's Interbrew merged with Brazil's AmBev, the company has been the hottest cost-cutter in the industry and the Brazilians who pull the strings at InBev must be licking their lips at the prospect of getting their hands on AB.

Swallowing AB would give InBev about a quarter of the world's beer market and may even allow it to throw off the negative connotations associated with its Stella Artois brand. The purveyor of Wife-beater would become a real world-beater.

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