Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has told his government to research whether Bud Light’s parent company breached its duties to shareholders as a conservative backlash continues to rage over the beer brand’s take care of transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
DeSantis, who’s running for the Republican presidential nomination, instructed Lamar Taylor, the interim executive director of the State Board of Administration, to instantly launch a review into “how AB InBev’s conduct has impacted and continues to affect the worth of SBA’s AB InBev holdings.”
“It appears to me that AB InBev can have breached legal duties owed to its shareholders, and that a shareholder motion could also be each appropriate and vital,” DeSantis wrote in a letter tweeted Friday.
“All options are on the table,” he added.
Shares of AB InBev are down greater than 2% this 12 months, while the broader market is up.
Sales of Bud Light have plummeted within the wake of conservative uproar and a boycott over the Mulvaney partnership. Last month, the beer lost its top spot within the U.S. beer market to Constellation Brands‘ Modelo Especial, which holds 8.7% of overall beer sales, while Bud Light holds 7%, in response to data shared by consulting firm Bump Willams.
The firm also found Bud Light sales are down by about 25% from last 12 months. Amid the boycott, shares for the corporate fell from $66 a share to $58. DeSantis said Florida had $53 million value of stock in AB InBev.
“Anheuser-Busch InBev takes our responsibility to our shareholders, employees, distributors and customers seriously,” a spokesperson for the corporate told CNBC in a press release Friday afternoon.
“We’re focused on driving long-term, sustainable growth for them by optimizing our business and providing consumers products to enjoy for any occasion,” the spokesperson said.
DeSantis suggested that the probe could prompt a lawsuit on behalf of the shareholders of Florida’s pension funds. “At the top of the day, there’s got to be penalties whenever you put business aside to concentrate on your social agenda on the expense of hardworking people,” he said in a Fox News interview Thursday night.
The governor accused the corporate of neglecting its stakeholders and pensioners by associating with “radical social ideologies.”
DeSantis oversees the state board as a trustee together with the state’s Republican attorney general and chief financial officer.Â
The move against Bud Light marks the newest instance of DeSantis jumping into an argument over a hot-button social issue and flexing his political powers.
The governor has been locked in a bitter feud with Disney, one in all his state’s top employers, for greater than a 12 months after the corporate criticized Florida’s controversial bill limiting classroom discussion of gender identity. Disney filed a federal lawsuit accusing DeSantis and his allies of political retaliation stemming from the clash over the classroom bill.
DeSantis, seen as former President Donald Trump’s top Republican primary rival, has kept up his attacks on the campaign trail against Disney and other entities he deems are pushing “woke” progressive political ideology.
“We must prudently manage the funds of Florida’s hardworking law enforcement officers, teachers, firefighters, and first responders in a fashion that focuses on growing returns, not subsidizing an ideological agenda through woke virtue signaling,” he wrote within the letter to Taylor.
DeSantis is trailing Trump by double digits in most national polls of the GOP primary race. Lower than two months after entering the race, the governor’s campaign is planning a reboot, NBC News reported Thursday.
Mulvaney has criticized Bud Light for not standing by her throughout the boycott. She said she was been harassed and intimidated as she became the face of the controversy.
“For months now I have been scared to go away my house, I have been ridiculed in public, I have been followed, and I actually have felt a loneliness that I would not wish on anyone,” Mulvaney said last month.
