Anheuser-Busch Is Target of U.S. Probe

Beer industry giant Anheuser-Busch Cos. confirmed that the Justice Department is looking into its distribution practices amid allegations that the brewer is trying to squeeze smaller rivals off the market. The maker of Budweiser says it will cooperate with the government. “We are confident that all our practices are entirely legitimate and legal,” Royce J. Estes, Anheuser-Busch’s vice president for corporate law, said in a statement. A spokesman for St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, the nation’s largest brewery, said that the allegations involved the “distribution and sale of beer, including our company’s policies and practices in marketing and distribution.”