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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, April 13, 2009

BUSINESS BRIEFS
BUSINESS
Rolling Rock may be up for sale

Advertiser News Services

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Students attend a job fair in China, where Premier Wen Jiabao says the economy is showing "positive changes."

Associated Press

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Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, the world's largest brewer, declined to comment on a Wall Street Journal report that it is exploring the sale of its Rolling Rock beer brand.

The Journal attributed discussion of a Rolling Rock sale to unidentified people familiar with the matter. In an e-mail message, Marianne Amssoms, a Leuven, Belgium-based spokeswoman, said the company declined to comment.

Anheuser-Busch Cos. bought Rolling Rock from InBev three years ago for $82 million, the Journal said. InBev, which acquired Anheuser-Busch last year to form the world's largest beer maker by sales, is selling assets to help repay debt from the deal, the newspaper said.

Anheuser, brewer of Budweiser and Bud Light, started brewing Rolling Rock at its Newark, N.J., plant after purchasing the brand, the Journal said. That upset some loyalists of Rolling Rock, which was made for almost 70 years in Latrobe, Pa., the newspaper reported.


COLLEGE CREDIT CARD DEBTS SOAR

As college costs soar, students are charging more educational expenses to plastic, helping boost credit card debt to record levels.

A new study to be released today by Sallie Mae, a college-financing company, finds that the average undergraduate carried $3,173 in credit card debt last year, the highest level since Sallie Mae began collecting this data in 1998. In 2004, the last time the study was done, students carried an average of $2,169 in card debt.

The higher the grade level, the greater the card debt, according to Sallie Mae. In 2008, college seniors with at least one credit card graduated with an average of $4,100 in card debt, up 41 percent from 2004. By comparison, freshmen's average credit card debt jumped 27 percent to $2,038.