In today's Birmingham Post (although not as yet on the website), came the news that international brewing conglomerate SABMiller was set to buy Dutch lager brewers Grolsch in a £580 million deal.
The world of international finance isn't really the remit of a writer looking at great pints of ale in Birmingham boozers, you might think. But the increasing conglomeration of beer companies across the globe is an ongoing issue that affects every brewer and drinker.
Considering that local and national beer tastes are particularly tenacious, beer companies have been surprisingly keen to group together and take each other over, with huge umbrella corporations like SABMiller and Anheuser Busch getting the kind of worldwide reach that even the likes of McDonalds might envy.
But it's not just the faceless American multinationals that are taking over these days. What used to be traditional regional brewers in Britain are now starting to expand and merge.
Groups like Marstons and Greene King are spreading at a massive rate, swallowing up other, often well-established, brewers in their march across the countryside. Greene King beers like IPA are already starting to become a familiar sight as far away from its Suffolk homeland as Birmingham.
The spread of Greene King in particular, has caused massive controversy among drinkers, and provoked fury when the IPA was placed second at the Great British Beer Festival a couple of years back.
For drinkers who appreciate the diversity of taste that the small breweries scattered around the West Midlands offer, it's time to be thankful for Progressive Beer Duty, the Government system of geared tax rates for breweries which at least provides some relief for smaller brewers operating in a big wide world.
And let's hope that the Government, after making aggressive noises against favourable tax rates for toher small businesses, doesn't decide to turn its wrath against our small breweries next.