In 2008, the world’s largest beer brewery, Anheuser-Busch merged with the world’s second largest brewery, InBev. The new company, headquartered in the Netherlands, is named Anheuser-Busch InBev NV. To complete the requirements below, you will need to obtain Anheuser-Busch InBev’s financial statements for 2007 and 2011. Obtain these as follows:
■ Go to the company’s website at www.ab-nbev.com.
■ Click on the “Investors” link.
■ Click on the “Reports and Publications” link.
■ Click on the “Annual and HY reports” link.
■ Click on the years of report desired, 2007 and 2011.
■ Click on the “Financial Reports” link.
The information in the 2007 financial statements is for InBev without Anheuser-Busch, and the information for 2011 is for the merged companies. Be careful when extracting data from the balance sheets because they are in reverse order of statements for companies in the United States. For example, InBev lists its noncurrent assets before current assets. Also note that the 2011 data are in dollars and the 2007 data are in euros. There is no need to convert the data to a common currency for this assignment since you will be asked to calculate ratios for each year separately.

Required
a. Compute the following ratios for 2011 and 2007. To make the computations simpler, use end-of-year amounts for total assets and total equity rather than averages. Show your calculations.

Gross margin percentage ..... Net margin
Return on investment ....... Return on equity
Current ratio ........... Debt to assets ratio
b. Based on the ratios computed in Requirement a, comment on the apparent effects of InBev’s merger with Anheuser-Busch. Assume any significant change in these ratios was the result of the acquisition.
c. Based on this limited analysis, does it appear that the effects of the merger were good or bad for InBev?