Warren E. Buffett‘s $28 billion acquisition of Heinz â€" a quintessentially American company â€" is almost a caricature of a Buffett acquistion.
But Mr. Buffett’s partner in the deal, the Brazilian-backed investment firm 3G Capital, has also shown a hankering for iconic American businesses.
3G, whose principal owner is the Brazilian billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann, add ketchup to a portfolio that has included burgers and beer. Mr. Lemann, who earned his fortune as a financier, played a major role in the multi-billion dollar merger of the Brazilian-Belgian beer giant InBev with Anheuser-Busch. He and his partners serve on Anheuser-Busch InBev‘s board.
And in 2010, 3G took Burger King Holdings private in a leveraged buyout valued at about $3.3 billion. Last April, just 18 months after taking it private, 3G sold shares of Burger King back to the public, but still retains majority ownership of the company. The firm has also previously invested in Wendy’s.
The ascendance of 3G and Mr. Lemann as major players on the global mergers-and-acquisition stage reflects the rise of Brazil as an economic power. Armed with strong balance sheets and a growing domestic economy, Brazilian companies have emerged as prominent buyers of American companies. In 2009, for instance, the Brazilian beef company JBS paid $800 million for a majority stake in Pilgrim’s Pride, the Texas chicken company.
Mr. Lemann, 73, who is worth $12 billion, according to Forbes magazine, is said to have come up with the idea to buy Heinz and brought it to his friend Mr. Buffett. The two men have known each other for decades, having served together on the board of Gillette! . Berkshire Hathaway is also a large shareholder of Anheuser-Busch InBev. Mr. Lemann, whose Swiss father emigrated to Brazil a century ago, is former Brazilian tennis champion who played at Wimbledon. He has lived in Switzerland since 1999, after an attempted kidnapping of his children.
He has been a major player in Brazil since the 1970s, when he acquired a small financial firm and build it into Banco de Investimentos Garantia, one of Brazil’s largest investment banks. Credit Suisse acquired his company for about $675 million in 1998. He and his business partners also earned a fortune after gaining control of a Brazilian brewery and building it into AmBev, one of the world’s largestbeer companies.
The point person on the transaction for 3G, which houses its investment operations in New York, is Alexandre Behring. Known as Alex, Mr. Behring is a Brazilian native who graduated from Harvard Business School in 1995 and lives in Greenwich, Conn. Another tidbit about 3G: For several years, it employed Marc Mezvinsky, the husband of Chelsea Clinton. Mr. Mezvinsky left 3G in 2011 and has since set up is own hedge fund.
