So the sharks have started moving closer to Scottish & Newcastle. This is the latest in a series of foregone conclusions in the British brewing scene since a Conservative government decided it would be a jolly idea to partially sever the tie between brewers and pub ownership with the Beer Orders of 1989.

The result, which had been predicted as far back as 1950, by a right-wing economist called Arthur Seldon, writing in The Economist. was that the big brewers – Bass (including Tennents of Scotland), Whitbread, Allied (Ind Coope, Ansells and Tetley’s), Courage, Grand Met (Watneys), Whitbread and S&N, quickly abandoned pub ownership almost entirely.

Then, because brewing in the UK isn’t that profitable, the big brewers abandoned brewing, so that by 2001 only Scottish & Newcastle was left of the Big Seven brewers of 1989 – the rest merged with others or transformed into something else, such as distillers or hotel companies.

S&N, which swallowed the brewing interests of Courage and Watney, rose from being the smallest of the Big Seven to being the largest UK brewer, while the rest of the industry was brought by Interbrew of Belgium (Whitbread and part of Bass), Coors of the United States (the rest of Bass) and Carlsberg of Denmark (Allied).

Unfortunately for S&N, it never dominated its home market the way Heineken, Anheuser-Busch, Carlsberg or SAB of South Africa did theirs, and it has never been able to find the transformational deal that would turn it into a true and invulnerable giant. It bought Kronenbourg off Danone in 2000, and became the biggest brewer in France; it bought Hartwall of Finland in 2002 and gained a half-share, with Carlsberg, in BBH, owner of the biggest brewing concern in Russia (to Carlsberg’s great annoyance). But what it really needed to do was acquire a truly global coverage, the way Interbrew did by merging with Ambev of Brazil, or SAB did by merging with Miller of the United States.

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