InBev profits brew up as IT team looks to M&A integration
Brewers InBev has reported that its total revenues grew by 7.7 percent in the third quarter of 2008. Last week the Brussels based company said its "flexible approach" to IT contracts reduced the need to renegotiate contracts.
InBev, which brews the Stella Artois and Becks beers, is hoping to acquire US rival AnheuserBusch before the end of 2008. "The combination with AnheuserBusch is on track to close by the end of the year," the company said in its financial statement. The deal will go through unless regulators or AnheuserBush shareholders scupper their plans.
InBev reported that earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose by 6.5 percent to 1.39 billion Euros (US$1.79 billion), compared to 1.33bn Euros for the same period last year.
If the deal goes through, director of global technology operations Leandro Balbinot will have a busy 2009 integrating the two major brewery companies. Speaking last month at a Forrester event in London he said the need to renegotiate IT supplier contracts can be minimised by making the initial deal as flexible as possible. "Most initial contracts are based on incomplete information," he said. When renegotiation Balbinot said many CIOs mistakenly try to change the entire contract at once as well as approaching vendors before knowing exactly what their project ambitions are.
InBev is almost halfway through a five-and-a-half year application management outsourcing contract with Logica. The deal is aimed at streamlining the end-to-end application management process for the brewer. It is an extension of a £47m (US$75 million) deal Logica struck with InBev in June 2006 to manage the brewers applications in eight countries in western, eastern and central Europe.
» posted by ITworld staff
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