Wall Street

Warren Buffet Buys Heinz For $28 Billion

[Warning: This article will be peppered by horrendous ketchup puns and jokes, the type that belong on a popsicle stick and not in a news piece. This is because I am a professional.]

Hot Dog! Billionaire Warren Buffet dipped into the ketchup business yesterday, buying H.J Heinz Co. for a cool $23.3 billion. Include Buffet’s assumed debt and the deal’s value soars to $28 billion making it the richest deal in food industry history. We hope the new owners can mustard the strength needed to withdraw all that cash!

Berkshire Hathaway, Buffet’s investment group, teamed up with the New York-based firm 3G Capital in the Heinz takeover. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Berkshire is putting up $12.12 billion for half of the equity in Heinz as well as $8 billion of preferred shares. 3G, best known for its role in the creation of Anheuser-Busch InBev, will run Heinz while Berkshire acts as a financing partner. Undoubtedly a deal like this will force other investment firms to play ketchup.

Buffet’s deal should accelerate Heinz’ global expansion. At the moment, Heinz products are on grocery shelves in over 200 countries, including Indonesia, Brazil and India. About two-thirds of the Pittsburg-based company’s revenue already come from outside the United States, a proportion that’s bound to rise after the investment consortium’s deal closes in the third quarter. But don’t worry, Heinz CEO William Johnson stressed that the company will maintain Pittsburg as its global headquarters since pulling out of the city now would be pretty weak sauce. Sauce. Like tomato sauce. Tomatoes are the primary ingredient in ketchup. Aw, forget it…

Reports of the acquisition have sent Heinz shares soaring: on Thursday the company’s stock price closed at $72.50, an increase of about 20 percent.

I love that America’s Favorite Billionaire just bought out a 144-year-old ketchup company. I can picture it now: two limousines idle side-by-side on a country road. “Pardon me,” a passenger calls out. “Would you have any Grey Poupon?”

“But of course,” the other limo’s occupant replies.

Their smug exchange is disturbed by a third limo screeching onto the scene. The mysterious passenger rolls down his window, emitting the blasting sounds of Kanye West’s “Clique“, and reveals that he is Warren Buffet. Buffet grabs an air cannon from beside him and begins to shoot Heinz ketchup bottles into the other vehicles. Chaos erupts, everything is covered in ketchup; Buffet manically laughs like he believes you but his Tommy gun don’t.

That, my friends, is what we call “re-branding.”

[Photo via Shutterstock]

TAGS: 3G Capital | berkshire hathaway | Heinz | Warren Buffet

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