James Watt, co-founder of BrewDog, says he would rather "shoot himself in the head" than sell out to "big beer". The imagery is extreme but there is no doubting the passion of the craft brewer from Aberdeen, who this year inserted a clause into the company's rules to prevent a sale to "a monolithic purveyor of bland industrial beer".
It was a defensive move to ward off the attentions of the big brewers. But holdouts like Mr Watt have become rarer after multinational beer companies — including Anheuser-Busch InBev, Molson Coors and Constellation Brands — have spent billions buying up smaller craft brewers in the US and Europe in recent years.
