It would appear that India's government is taking steps to recover money that Mendocino Brewing Company's owner Vijay Mallya defaulted on:

http://www.financialexpress.com/industry/banking-finance/bad-news-for-people-like-nirav-modi-vijay-mallya-modi-govt-comes-up-with-plan-to-tighten-noose-around-wilful-defaulters/1097455/

What does this means for Mendocino Brewing Company, the iconic brewery that used to employ dozens of Ukiah area workers?

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/7940574-181/distributor-mendocino-brewing-co-stops

1/n

Local reporting has been thin on the plant closure, with nothing in the local Ukiah Daily Journal ukiahdailyjournal.com.

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat (pressdemocrat.com) reported the closure of the taproom on January 12 of this year.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/7864684-181/mendocino-brewing-to-close-ukiah

(For reference, Santa Rosa is a city about 60 miles south of Ukiah and about 55 miles north of San Francisco.)

2/n

The SR Press Democrat followed up its initial report with a January 31, 2018 story wherein the announcement that the brewery had ceased production was attributed to the brewery's distributer, Columbia Distributing.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/7940574-181/distributor-mendocino-brewing-co-stops

The article mentions the closure of Mendocino Brewing's sister brewery, Saratoga Brewing in Saratoga Spring, New York.

3/n

Syracuse, New York's Post-Standard did a much better job reporting on the closure of Saratoga Brewing, detailing some of the local impacts of losing a large regional brewery.

http://www.newyorkupstate.com/breweries/2018/01/saratoga_brewing_one_of_new_yorks_oldest_and_biggest_breweries_has_closed.html

Mendocino Brewing Company did not only brew the Mendocino line of beers. It also was a contract brewery. Where there any effects to report? Not that I can tell from Ukiah Daily Journal coverage, so far absolutely silent on the matter.

4/n

History:
Mendocino Brewing Company started out as the Hopland Brewing Company in 1983. The company went public to support its popularity-driven expansion in 1994, advertising its IPO with flyers in 6packs.

By the time the dust settled, the majority stockholder and beneficial owner was Vijay Mallya.

5/n

"Beneficial owner" sounds like a good thing, but not necessarily for workers, customers, or society as a whole. A beneficial owner is someone who gets the benefits of business ownership while the actual owner, usually a trust or other ownership structure, assumes the risks.

Wealthy individuals such as Mallya can get the benefits of owning a business, such as money and access to other assets. The actual owner gets the risks of ownership.

6/n

In this case the actual owner was Mendocino Brewing Company Incorporated, publicly traded as MENB with assets including both the Mendocino Brewery in Ukiah, CA and the Olde Saratoga Brewery in New York.

Mendocino Brewing Co Inc is itself the property of United Breweries Holdings Limited (UBHL) aka United Breweries (UB), a conglomerate that Vijay Mallya originally inherited from his parents.

Everything was going along relatively well until 2012

7/n