|
Coors, Molson merge to form $6bn brewer
SABMiller to get Real Thing?
US, UK push free access to science results
M&A
Coors, Molson merge to form $6bn
brewer
Two of North America’s largest
independent brewers, Colorado’s Coors, and Canada’s Molson, are merging
to form the world’s fifth biggest brewing company.
The move is a response to the
takeover of the US number two brewer, Miller, by London-based SA Breweries
to form the world’s second-biggest brewer to market leader Anheuser-Busch.
The beer market in developed
countries has suffered steady loss of market share due to competition from
bottled water and fears about obesity. But underdeveloped markets such as
Russia, China and India have grown at a better than double digit clip.
Molson and Coors already share
distribution and cross-sell some of each others’ brands, mainly in the US,
Canada, the UK and Brazil. The merger will save them some $175 million in
synergies identified by 2007.
Founded in 1786, Molson is North
America’s oldest brewer; Coors was founded in 1873. Eric Molson will chair
Molson Coors while Coors’ CEO Leo Kiely will run the business.
SABMiller
to get Real Thing?
World number two brewer SABMiller
says it is thinking of paying $518 million to buy out the minorities who own
26% of Amalgamated Beverage Industries, the largest bottler of Coca-Cola
products in South Africa.
Intellectual
property
US, UK push free access to science
results
The open access system whereby the
results of research paid for by taxpayers are made available to the public
for free received a big push from the US and UK governments
Firstly the House of Commons’
Science and Technology Committee said the government should insist that
researchers funded by the government should make available an on-line copy
of their scientific papers.
A day later a US House of
Representatives committee said the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
should provide free access to all the research it funds within six months of
publication. It also gave the NIH until December to submit a plan on how to
implement the new policy in fiscal year 2005.
Science publishers, which insist on
all rights to the works and charge high subscription fees for their
peer-reviewed journals, were dismayed. But Elsevier, one of the largest,
said recently that authors could post their own papers on personal Web sites
or the Web sites of the institutions they work for.
|
