Dethroning the King (58 page)

Some former executives argue that handing the company to InBev was a necessary end to Anheuser's story after the string of wins it posted through the 1980s and early 1990s. “The things that made us great when we were growing from 10 percent market share to 48 percent are not the same things that make a company great when it's going from 48 percent share to 55,” said Jack Purnell. “It's the difference between the winning ingredients in consolidation and the winning ingredients once the industry has already consolidated.”

He continued, “Fortunately for the company, InBev has some of those skills—skills you need when you are not gaining share at a rapid pace. When you are gaining share, that's all you need. You can have relatively low pricing, but as long as you're gaining share rapidly you're going to be fine. But once you stop gaining share, you'd better have cost-cutting and pricing and focus skills, and these are three skills InBev brings.”

To some, the obvious question is: why couldn't—and didn't—Anheuser-Busch develop those abilities so it could survive on its own, without needing an acquirer to take the reins? It simply didn't prepare for the inevitable, and chose to press on for years with its insular growth strategies and profligate spending.

“The company was just so overstaffed, and always had been,” said Harry Schuhmacher. When Anheuser-Busch executives made appearances, he said, “they brought 14 people with them. They brought a guy with a laptop, a guy with a spare laptop, and a guy with a spare for the spare laptop. They brought their own teleprompters, and five bulletproof Suburbans would pull up. It was just crazy expensive, whereas MillerCoors's Tom Long would just walk up by himself with a thumb drive. That kind of culture was ripe for the picking.”

“Neither Pat nor August [III] did the really heavy lifting that needed to be done” to eliminate spending, Sandy Warner acknowledged. “When August IV got in the seat, he and his team recognized that they had a ton of costs that they could and did need to take out, and developed a plan to do it. But this deal overtook them.”

In the months that followed the loss of the company that brought wealth and notoriety to generations of their family, both The Third and The Fourth dropped out of sight. They did so separately—The Third to his secluded farm, and The Fourth splitting time between his home near St. Louis and a new place farther west, near Lake of the Ozarks. There was little need for communication between father and son without Anheuser-Busch to bind them together. The two hardly spoke in the immediate aftermath of the deal, and, they didn't pick up much of a dialogue in the months since. The status of their relationship gave locals plenty to chatter about. Neither man seemed to have many close friendships to fall back upon after Anheuser-Busch was yanked away. Both had always tended in moments of duress to turn to their love of the outdoors and of flying—of the tranquility and the feeling of unbridled power that comes with drifting alone through the air. The Fourth shelled out more than $4 million for a new airplane, which he later traded for a less expensive Bell helicopter as the cost of the plane's upkeep and fees to his father—who charged him for hangar space—grew oppressive.

“They always lived a very isolated life anyway. Mr. Busch is out on a very secluded farm, so no one is there kissing his fanny,” said one former top executive. “Mr. Busch is just very isolated from even those he would consider friendly associates.

“Young August always had a cult of people who wanted to be in his entourage, but he was always good about blocking that kind of stuff,” the executive continued. “He just wanted certain people around him, so he didn't tolerate that. They were very, very suspicious about people trying to get close to them just because of who they were. But that suspicion cannot lead to many solid friendships.”

The takeover sank The Fourth into a dangerously deep depression and forced him through some jarring life changes. In early April 2008, the month before reports of InBev's interest first hit, he had stood jubilantly in front of workers outside the huge Anheuser-Busch packaging plant in downtown St. Louis at a party to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition. With his ancestors' perseverance through that difficult era on his mind, The Fourth gave a rousing and heartfelt address to the crowd.

“I love you guys, you ladies!” he said. “What an honor—an emotional day. Here's to our future,” he said, lifting a bottle of Budweiser in a toast, “and another 75 fantastic years. Let's go get 'em!”

Exactly 14 weeks later, just a brief walk from that site, The Fourth faced his employees again and explained that Anheuser-Busch had just surrendered its longstanding independence. This time, Carlos Brito stood at his side as Anheuser's victorious new commander. The Fourth's reign as the last great American beer baron was up, just a year and a half after it had begun.

His life already in upheaval, he made a couple of other personal adjustments once the merger closed. Rather than pursuing a long lusted-after quest as some of his colleagues had, he seemed intent on withdrawing as much as possible from everyone.

He filed for divorce from the former Kathryn Thatcher on November 26, 2008—less than a week after the takeover closed, and after just two years of marriage. The couple, according to the filing, had already been separated for nearly two months, and Thatcher had moved to Massachusetts. Thanks to a prenuptial agreement she had signed before the marriage, the case moved quickly through the courts and the divorce was made official at the end of January 2009. “She Was His Wife, but She Wasn't His ‘Bud' ” rang the pithy headline on one St. Louis news blog that covered the split.

“I felt badly about that, because the girl was a sweet girl,” said Ambassador James Jones. “I don't think she had any real idea of what it's like to be in a corporate family, and her responsibilities. She tried hard. I never knew whether that was a real marriage or one that was necessary” for The Fourth to become CEO.

Earlier that same month, The Fourth resigned as a director of FedEx Corporation, relinquishing a position he had held since he started prepping for Anheuser's top spot in 2003. A gossip column in the local paper reported that he went on a car-buying spree, picking up a $160,000 Audi 10, an $84,000 Nissan, and a $350,000 black SL series Mercedes, which put the number of cars he owned at 16 or 17. He spent most of his time out at his lake retreat, staying up until the wee hours of the morning and then sleeping past noon, and people who knew him gossiped that he had put on some weight for a while before paring back down. “He always said he liked wearing flip-flops and T-shirts, and that's pretty much what he does,” said Harry Schuhmacher. “The distributor there will still drop beer off at his house.”

The Fourth's friends and former colleagues made efforts to reach out to him and offer support, but felt they could extend themselves only so far. Many are still recovering from the loss of Anheuser-Busch themselves.

“In my discussions with young August since then, he's so beaten down, we don't even talk about it,” said Bob Lachky. “He's just not reaching back out too much. He sent some beautiful flowers for my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and a beautiful note, and I knew Lisa [his assistant] didn't write it. I knew it was from August. That really was touching.”

“The Fourth had a pretty wounding experience,” said one of the company's advisors. “When I've tried to reach out to him, he does respond in a reasonable period. But I think a lot of those relationships represent, to somebody like him, a bit of a reminder of all that could have been. Those things become very difficult.”

It's hard to write off The Fourth's missteps as purely his father's fault, however, some of those who know The Fourth and like him admit. His upbringing may have been emotionally complicated and unconventional, but he was born into immense privilege and squandered plenty of it over the years. At any other company, he might have remained a marketing executive rather than rising to the top.

“That was a very tough relationship. But he's an adult,” said one person close to the company. “Everybody has to take responsibility for their actions at some point in their life.”

“He's a very likable guy, and he's had a tragic life in a way that no one will ever be sympathetic to. And they probably shouldn't be,” another said. “He was just over his head.”

Jim Forese shrugged off the loss of the company during The Fourth's tenure as something he couldn't have prevented during the year and a half he was CEO. “This is just one of those things that happens,” he said. “It happened on his watch. It's not the worst thing to have happen on your watch.” The Fourth, however, might disagree. His devotion to Anheuser-Busch was about pride and a longing for approval—not about money or power. He had access to plenty of that.

People close to The Third and The Fourth unanimously hoped to see a renewal of their relationship. Given the divisive history of the Busch family's men, however, few said they expected one soon. Gussie and The Third didn't speak for roughly a decade after The Third forced him out as CEO, and The Fourth once said he remembered watching the two of them try to patch things up on trips with his father out to Grant's Farm.

“I think The Fourth, regrettably, hungered to have a better relationship with a guy who just seemed to lack the interest,” said one person who has known him for years. “If you weren't a carbon copy of The Third, The Third just didn't want to have anything to do with you. And August was never going to be his dad. He's just a different kind of guy.”

“It's a very sad story, really,” said beer industry writer Benj Steinman. “It's living proof that money doesn't buy happiness.”

The Fourth's descent into depression following the takeover plumbed new depths just two days before Christmas in 2010, when word of a shocking scandal caught fire in St. Louis and spread nationwide. It quickly escalated into his highest-profile—and most expensive—tangle with the law, and may have diminished even further his chances of mending fences with his father.

Adrienne Martin, a 27-year-old aspiring beer model who was soon identified as The Fourth's girlfriend, was found dead on top of his bed in his St. Louis mansion of what police identified as a likely drug overdose.

Local authorities waited four days before releasing confirmation of the incident, which spun media outlets into an indignant frenzy and bolstered some observers' insinuations that The Fourth was receiving kid-glove treatment. Reports detailing the chaotic state of his mansion when police arrived only fueled conspiracy theories about the circumstances surrounding Martin's death.

At around 1 p.m. on December 19, a household staffer called 911 to report that a woman was lying unresponsive in The Fourth's darkened bedroom. Martin was found dead by police upon their arrival, dressed in a zip-up sweatshirt, gray stretch leggings, and only one sock. A cocaine-residue-covered straw was found stashed in her right sweatshirt pocket, and another straw was later discovered hidden beneath the mattress.

The report compiled by police officers who combed over August IV's mansion painted a disturbing portrait of a man who seemed prepared for an “end of days” scenario, with loaded guns, ammunition, and piles of electronic equipment, power cords, and remote controls scattered in disarray across the master bedroom. It seemed extreme even for the firearm-loving Busch family: police found a loaded shotgun stashed behind The Fourth's bathroom door and a loaded Glock with an extended magazine dangling from a hook next to his toilet.

During the six weeks it took for investigators to release toxicology results, Martin's friends and family members swore she was firmly against drugs. Her ex-husband, a doctor, claimed to have diagnosed her with a heart condition called long QT syndrome, but he had no documentation as proof, and no other doctors had performed relevant tests. Setting the protestations of Martin's family aside, all signs pointed to a drug overdose.