1987 - Year of the shrinking market?
It's not the biggest US corporate borrower overseas, but it's one open to new ideas. Anheuser-Busch, the AA-rated brewing, food and leisure company that has a 37% share of the US beer market, has Swiss franc and yen dual-currency Eurobond deals outstanding as well as plain vanilla Eurodollar debt. In October, the company tapped the New York market with a $100 million 10-year 8% notes issue, and the chief financial officer, Jerry Ritter, set off on a tour of Europe to coincide with Anheuser-Busch's new listings on the London, Paris, Frankfurt and Zurich stock exchanges.
Over the next 12 months, Ritter expects to be looking for around $200 million from the international debt markets. Ritter sees no great upward pressure on rates, and that, coupled with his firm's depth of short-term financing options (there is a total of $500 million of bank credit facilities open to Anheuser-Busch as well as the US commercial paper market), means he can take time choosing his deals.
Now that the fizzy appeal of dual-curency deals to corporate issuers has gone a little flat, Ritter will focus on the plain-vanilla US dollar markets.