Money and Finance

The Brazilian Billionaire Who Controls Your Beer, Your Condiments, and Your Whopper

Found via the Corner of Berkshire & Fairfax.

After they sold H.J. Heinz to Warren Buffett and a bunch of Brazilians in June, the ketchup manufacturer’s outgoing board of directors met for dinner at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Club to congratulate themselves on a job well done. Twenty-three billion dollars had just changed hands. The takeover price, at $72.50 a share, was almost 20 percent higher than the company’s recent all-time high. “We said we’re all going to miss each other, but we felt we had done right by the shareholders,” says Dean O’Hare, who’d sat on the board since 2000. Heinz is an institution in Pittsburgh—the Steelers play at Heinz Field, locals of means like to get married at Heinz Memorial Chapel—and Buffett’s presence allayed fears that the 144-year-old company would be dismantled. “Seeing the name on the letter was very important to us,” O’Hare says.

The only really un-Buffettlike aspect of the deal, other than the high price, was the Brazilians. Not because of their nationality, but because they were the principals at 3G Capital, an investment firm best known for the leveraged buyout of Burger King in 2010. Had the Oracle of Omaha changed his mind on private equity, which he once compared to a porn shop? At Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRK/A) annual shareholders’ meeting in May, Buffett explained why he seemed to be breaking his own rules: his confidence in 3G’s 74-year-old chief investor and strategist, Jorge Paulo Lemann. He called Lemann “classy.” As a sign of Buffett’s esteem, 3G and Berkshire have equal stakes in Heinz despite Berkshire putting up three times as much cash. Heinz, Buffett said, would be Lemann’s show.

In the U.S., Lemann is virtually unknown, even though he and his two longtime partners, Marcel Herrmann Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira, now control three icons of U.S. consumer culture: Heinz ketchup, Burger King, and, after the $52 billion takeover of Anheuser-Busch in 2008, Budweiser beer. The combined market value of the companies they run is $187 billion—larger than that of Citigroup (C).

- The Importance Of Culture
From DREAM BIG: How the Brazilian Trio behind 3G Capital - Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira - acquired Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Heinz: YOU CAN EXPORT A GREAT CULTURE ACROSS WIDELY DIVERGENT INDUSTRIES AND GEOGRAPHIES. The...

- “dream, People, Culture”: Carlos Brito, Ceo Of Anheuser-busch Inbev
Link to video .................. Related book: DREAM BIG: How the Brazilian Trio behind 3G Capital - Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira - acquired Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Heinz [H/T Santangel's Review] ...

- Burger King In Talks To Buy Tim Hortons In Canada Tax Deal
Link to article: Burger King in Talks to Buy Tim Hortons in Canada Tax Deal Burger King Worldwide Inc. is in talks to buy Canadian coffee-and-doughnut chain Tim Hortons Inc., a deal that would be structured as a so-called tax inversion and...

- Berkshire Hathaway, 3g Capital To Buy Heinz For $23 Bln Cash
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc and 3G Capital will buy H.J. Heinz Co for $72.50 a share, or $23.2 billion in cash, Heinz said on Thursday. Including debt assumption, Heinz valued the deal at $28 billion, which it called the largest in food...

- Sonho Grande (dream Big)
Two years back, Buffett recommended the book "Dream Big", the story of 3G Capital, which I finally got around to reading. When Buffett recommended it he was referring to 3G's involvement in the Heinz deal and how much he liked doing business over...

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