InBev may be based in Belgium, but since the merger four years ago of Interbrew with AmBev, Latin America’s biggest brewer, the powerbase has lain squarely in Brazil. Recognition of this shift came a year later when InBev failed to renew the contract of John Brock, as chief executive, and replaced him with Carlos Brito, the former AmBev chief executive.

The appointment of Mr Brito was engineered by a group of wealthy Brazilian bankers led by Jorge Paulo Lemann, a former Davis Cup tennis star and one of Brazil’s wealthiest men. It is Mr Lemann and Mr Brito who will decide when — or if — to press the button on a $46 billion (£23 billion) bid for Anheuser-Busch, the American maker of Budweiser and Bud Light.

Mr Brito, who was born in 1960, gained a degree in mechanical engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and an MBA from Stanford University. After stints with Daimler-Benz and Shell he joined AmBev in 1989 and held positions in finance, operations and sales, before becoming chief executive in January 2004.

In the wake of the Interbrew merger, he became president of InBev’s North American division. As he demonstrated at AmBev, Mr Brito has been aggressive in picking up market share, as can be seen in Britain, where the company has been happy to discount Stella Artois to counter a declining beer market.

The Brazilian’s approach to leading InBev is largely based on the business ethos of Mr Lemann, one of its leading shareholders and most analysts accept that it is the 68-year-old financier who is pulling the strings. In the 1970s and 1980s, he turned Garantia, a small investment bank, into a Brazilian Goldman Sachs, launching the country’s first hostile bid and starting the first private equity fund.

Curiously for a man who drinks only mineral water, Mr Lemann developed a taste for beer in 1989 when he and his partners bought Brahma, Brazil’s biggest brewer, and transformed it. In 1999, by which time he had sold Garantia to Credit Suisse for $675 million, it merged with Antarctica, a local rival, to become AmBev, which then merged with Interbrew to become InBev.

The stringent cost-cutting and incentive-driven pay structure imposed by Mr Brito, at Mr Lemann’s behest, is in marked contrast to the paternalistic culture of Anheuser-Busch, in which the founding family still holds sway in the boardroom. If InBev does swallow America’s biggest brewer, it may not be seen as his deal, but he will be the one who has to make it work.