Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called on the head of his state’s pension fund to review its holdings in Bud Light’s parent company after bigoted right-wing attacks over a partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney led to a reported drop in sales.
In a letter to Florida’s State Board of Administration on Thursday, the 2024 Republican presidential candidate claimed Anheuser-Busch InBev’s board “may have breached legal duties owed to its shareholders.” He said “all options are on the table” to protect the SBA and retirees, including a possible shareholder action.
“We must prudently manage the funds of Florida’s hardworking law enforcement officers, firefighters, and first responders in a manner that focuses on growing returns, not subsidizing an ideological agenda through woke virtue signaling,” DeSantis wrote in the letter to SBA interim director Lamar Taylor.
DeSantis, who has taken aim at Disney in recent months and promoted his anti-“woke” agenda on the campaign trail, claimed to Fox News’ Jesse Watters that the state’s $180 billion pension fund holds over $50 million of AB InBev stock ― which works out to less than three-hundreths of a percent of the fund.
Responding to Watters’ question about how badly the pension fund took a hit, DeSantis said pensioners have been “absolutely hurt.”
“So we’re going to be launching an inquiry about Bud Light and InBev,” DeSantis said. “And it could be something that leads to a derivative lawsuit filed on behalf of the shareholders of the Florida pension fund, because at the end of the day, there’s got to be penalties for when you put business aside to focus on your social agenda at the expense of hardworking people.”
A derivative suit is a type of legal action shareholders can take against a company’s leadership when they believe those leaders’ actions have improperly caused the stock to drop. However, DeSantis and his transphobic allies are themselves largely responsible for the decline in sales after they called for a boycott of the brand in April when Mulvaney posted a video sponsored by Bud Light to her Instagram account.
Jimmy Patronis, the chief financial officer of Florida, said in a statement to Orlando’s WKMG-TV that the governor’s action is “100% the right thing to do.”
“As always, Governor DeSantis is over the target. This company has had its head in the sand for too long and they should use this opportunity to course correct,” Patronis said.
“Moreover, other CEOs should use this as an opportunity to shut down their woke departments. It may make you popular at cocktail parties, but it’s going to cost your company, your shareholders, and maybe your job.”
HuffPost has reached out to AB InBev for comment.