By Ananya Mariam Rajesh

(Reuters) -Constellation Brands’ Modelo Especial was the top-selling beer brand in the United States for a second consecutive month in June, after first dethroning Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Bud Light in May.

Bud Light, which held the top spot as the most-sold beer in 2022 and in the first four months of this year, has seen sales drop after a backlash from conservatives over a social media promotion with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

Several U.S. retailers have faced pushback from conservatives over the sale of LGBTQ+ merchandise. Target, which has sold Pride-themed merchandise in June for years, was forced to remove some of it following confrontations between customers and employees.

Modelo Especial was the top-selling beer brand for the four weeks ended July 1, with an 8.7% share of overall beer sales through retail stores for the period, while Bud Light came in second with a 7% share, according to consulting company Bump Williams, which sources data from NielsenIQ.

AB InBev’s CEO Michel Doukeris said in May that it was too early to have a full view of the impact of the backlash against Pride-linked promotions.

“This boycott has now become something much more permanent than anyone anticipated,” said Neil Reid, professor of geography at the University of Toledo, who researches the beer industry.

Sales of Bud Light and Budweiser dropped 28% and 11.7%, respectively, from a year earlier, while Modelo Especial sales rose 8.5%.

“The Bud Light and Budweiser share losses would persist through the year and we believe that the consumers who have opted to move away from those two brands are ultimately lost to the company,” said TD Cowen analyst Vivien Azer.

Azer added that consumers had quickly figured out AB InBev’s other beer brands like Michelob Ultra and Natural Light, which are also seeing a fall in sales. Before the backlash, Natural Light was gaining due to cost-conscious consumers opting for cheaper six-packs.

Companies like Target are now facing criticism from gay rights groups for insufficient support for the community. In June, New York Attorney General Letitia James had also called the company’s move “wrong” and urged the retailer to reverse its decision.

Even workers at dozens of U.S. Starbucks locations held strikes in June after the union representing the company’s baristas alleged that managers had banned Pride-themed decor.

(Reporting by Ananya Mariam Rajesh in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)

(Reuters) -Bankrupt SVB Financial Group has sued the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) to recover the $1.93 billion that the regulator seized while it took over Silicon Valley Bank in March, a filing in a bankruptcy court on Sunday showed.

The group said inability to access the funds was affecting its reorganization as the money should be generating more than $100 million in annual interest. Without that, it might have to seek costly and uncertain “debtor-in-possession” financing.

The FDIC and the bank are embroiled in a dispute over the regulator’s effort to recoup the cost of rescuing Silicon Valley Bank.

The lender collapsed in March after a deposit flight that triggered the worst U.S. banking crisis in 15 years and led to the failure of two other regional banks.

The regulator guaranteed all deposits of Silicon Valley Bank and later brokered a deal for regional lender First Citizens BancShares to buy the failed bank.

The complaint alleged that the FDIC induced SVB Financial to keep its cash at the failed bank, only to later seize it.

The FDIC guaranteed “all” deposits to prevent a run on the bank, but later carved out SVB Financial’s own funds from that guarantee, the complaint said.

SVB Financial filed for bankruptcy protection and last month agreed to sell its investment banking unit to a group led by the chief executive of the business. It is still exploring options for its venture capital and credit investment arm.

The FDIC has said that Silicon Valley Bank’s failure drained its insurance fund by $16 billion and it is legally able to hold the seized funds while it determines SVB Financial’s share of the rescue costs.

While the FDIC asserted it has claims against the company to justify its refusal to pay, it has not identified any of them “despite having numerous opportunities,” SVB Financial alleged.

The FDIC declined to comment.

In May, a U.S. bankruptcy judge had ordered the FDIC to return $10 million in seized tax refund checks to SVB Financial.

(Reporting by Urvi Dugar, Shubham Kalia and Niket Nishant in Bengaluru and Dietrich Knauth in New York; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Arun Koyyur)

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – General Motors Co on Monday cut the starting price for the Cadillac Lyriq in China by almost 14%, joining Volkswagen in a new round of electric vehicle price reductions in a market where global automakers are under pressure.

The Lyriq, a luxury crossover based on GM’s Ultium EV architecture, is now priced from 379,700 yuan ($52,466) from 439,700 yuan ($60,784) previously, according to GM’s China website.

GM also offered an additional discount equivalent to almost $2,500 for Lyriq buyers who put down a deposit in China before the end of August.

GM’s move came just after Volkswagen cut prices on its EVs in China, where the market share of made-in-China EV brands is rising and the market faces intense price competition.

VW’s joint venture with state-owned automaker FAW on Friday announced discounts of between 8% and almost 27% on its ID-series of electric vehicles.

VW’s other joint-venture with state-owned automaker SAIC offered a limited time discount on the ID.3 hatchback, another VW EV, by the equivalent of just over $5,100. That put its starting price below the Qin EV from BYD, one of China’s most popular models.

VW is China’s top-selling foreign automaker.

Since January, when Tesla cut prices in China, about two dozen automakers have followed with price cuts of their own to stay competitive and stoke demand.

China’s auto market, the world’s largest, is on track for overall growth of about 3%, with the share of EVs and plug-ins rising fast. Consultancy AlixPartners forecasts this will be the first year made-in-China brands top 50% of their home market.

Those changes have created intensifying competition over price and features that have both driven EV sales and threatened industry-wide profitability, analysts say.

China’s auto association on Saturday withdrew a pledge it had brokered among 16 automakers, including Tesla, to avoid “abnormal pricing,” saying it recognized that would violate antitrust law.

GM CFO Paul Jacobson said last month the Lyriq represented an opportunity for the automaker in China. Cadillac sales were down almost 8% in China last year, industry data shows.

The Lyriq, which starts from just under $59,000 in the United States, has had a slow rollout since its introduction last year. GM officials said U.S. pricing remains unchanged.

GM sold 2,326 Lyriqs in the United States in the first half of the year. It sold 918 in China in the first quarter, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, which is set to announce first-half sales data later this month.

GM said on Monday it delivered more than 526,000 vehicles in China in the second quarter, up 9%. Of that total, over 115,000 were EVs.

($1 = 7.2370 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Zhang Yan and Brenda Goh; Additional reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by Kevin Krolicki and Sharon Singleton)