Free Republic

Comrades, there are wreckers in our midst. The industrialist reactionaries at Burger King have declared their intention to abandon the struggle and join the ranks of the enemy in rightist Canada. That’s right. The traitorous corporation Burger King plans to take advantage of the fact that America’s English-speaking neighbor to the north maintains the second-lowest corporate tax rate of any G-7 nation. How dare they? “The iconic American fast-food brand is in talks to buy coffee-and-donuts chain Tim Hortons and move its headquarters to Canada,” Forbes reported. If concluded, this deal would create the world’s third-largest restaurant company and allow...

The new owners of H.J. Heinz Co. have offered buyouts to all workers in Pittsburgh, where the ketchup-and-food giant has been based for decades, but insist the offer doesn’t signal a plan to move the company’s headquarters. Instead, Heinz officials said the buyout is being offered because the new owners Berkshire Hathaway and Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital recognize the company’s new culture might not be “the perfect fit” for longtime Pittsburgh-based employees. Heinz officials said any workers who quit will be replaced, leaving the company with the same number of workers in Pittsburgh. …

Add Arnold Waldo of Carrick to the list of people disappointed with recent changes being made at the H.J. Heinz Co. Mr. Waldo, 82, who retired from the Pittsburgh food company in 1985, received a letter in late November notifying him that Heinz was reducing its contribution to a retiree reimbursement account used to cover certain medical expenses, such as co-pays for doctor visits and health insurance premiums. "Beginning in 2014, Heinz will contribute $1,093 per year, per household to your RRA," the letter dated Nov. 21 said. The cut, not the first to the retiree benefit, takes the level...

Yesterday in this space, the focus was on the latest wrinkle in the Left's developing strategy for dealing with dissent. It began with using the IRS regulatory power to suppress conservative, Tea Party and evangelical dissenters. The new wrinkle is expanding the tax agency's activity to impose new restrictions on permissible activities of 501(C)(4) nonprofit advocacy groups and to require reporting the names of donors and the amounts they contributed. The avowed purpose of these initiatives is to put an end to what is known throughout the politically correct precincts of the mainstream media as “dark money.”Dark money is funding...

H.J. Heinz Co. is closing three plants in North America and cutting 1,350 jobs in an effort to operate more efficiently. The food maker said Thursday that it will close facilities in two states and Canada over the next six to eight months. The cuts total 200 jobs in Florence, S.C., 410 jobs in Pocatello, Idaho and 740 employees in Leamington, Ontario, in Canada. …

McDonald’s has lost its taste for Heinz ketchup. The fast-food giant said in a statement Friday that it is cutting ties with the condiment company after 40 years due to management changes there. A former Burger King CEO became head of Heinz in June after the company was bought by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital. 3G, a Brazilian investment firm, also controls Burger King. The impact of the change may be tasted more overseas. In the U.S., McDonald’s uses Heinz products only in Pittsburgh and Minneapolis restaurants. …

PITTSBURGH - H.J. Heinz Co, the world's largest ketchup maker, said on Tuesday it plans to eliminate 600 jobs across North America.

BOSTON (AP) — Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and heir to a ketchup company fortune, was hospitalized in critical but stable condition Monday, a day after showing symptoms consistent with a seizure, a person in close contact with the family said.

Teresa Heinz Kerry was in critical but stable condition at a Boston hospital after being transferred there from a hospital in Nantucket, where she and husband Secretary of State John Kerry were vacationing. A family spokesman said that Heinz Kerry was transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital from Nantucket Cottage Hospital, where she was taken by ambulance earlier today.

Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, was taken to a hospital on Nantucket this afternoon, according to a person close to the family, Boston.com reports.

The shocking minutes relating to President Putin’s meeting this past week with US Secretary of State John Kerry reveal the Russian leaders “extreme outrage” over the Obama regimes continued protection of global seed and plant bio-genetic giants Syngenta and Monsanto in the face of a growing “bee apocalypse” that the Kremlin warns “will most certainly” lead to world war. According to these minutes, released in the Kremlin today by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation (MNRE), Putin was so incensed over the Obama regimes refusal to discuss this grave matter that he refused for three...

Brazilian private-equity firm 3G Capital is sliding the chief executive of Burger King Worldwide Inc. (BKW), which it currently controls, into the same role at H.J. Heinz Co. (HNZ) once 3G and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA, BRKB) complete their $23 billion buyout of the ketchup maker. Bernardo Hees will replace Heinz CEO William Johnson, who has led the ketchup-maker for 15 years and turned it into more of a global food company by selling ketchup and other Heinz's products all across the world. 3G and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in February teamed up to buy Heinz for $72.50 a share...

You do know that. I love our Secretary, but Teresa Heinz Kerry is another woman of courage who has been just a dear friend and supporter to me for a very long time, and it is just a thrill to have you both in this role. Congratulations, and thank you.

Billionaire Warren Buffett loves Heinz ketchup with his hash browns so much that he is driving Heinz into junk status. Maybe he actually likes Hunts Ketchup better. His love of ketchup and hash browns is transforming H.J. Heinz Co. into the most-leveraged food maker in America. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and 3G Capital Inc.’s $2 billion acquisition of Heinz may double the company’s total debt to five times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, according to Fitch Ratings, the highest of any comparable food company. The cost to protect Heinz’s debt from losses soared to a record after the...

<p>The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has frozen the assets of a Swiss trading account that allegedly made a series of "highly suspicious" trades reaping about $1.7 million ahead of the blockbuster sale of H.J. Heinz Co.</p> <p>The regulator's move came one day after Heinz said it was selling itself for $23 billion to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Brazilian private-equity firm 3G Capital in one of the biggest food-industry acquisitions ever.</p>

Goldman Sachs Group Inc is cooperating with a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission probe into insider options trading in H.J. Heinz Co before the food company announced it was being acquired, Goldman said on Friday.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is dipping into the ketchup business as part of $23.3 billion deal to buy the Heinz ketchup company. H.J. Heinz Co. says it’s the largest deal ever in the food industry. The company, based in Pittsburgh, also makes Classico spaghetti sauces, Ore-Ida potatoes and Smart Ones frozen meals. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and its partner on the deal—3G Capital, the investment firm that bought Burger King in 2010—say Heinz will remain headquartered in Pittsburgh. Heinz CEO William Johnson said in a statement that the company “will have an opportunity to drive further growth” as a private enterprise....

(Reuters) - Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and private equity firm 3G Capital will buy ketchup and baby food maker H.J. Heinz Co for $23.2 billion in cash, a deal that combines 3G's ambitions in the food industry with Buffett's hunt for growth. Including debt assumption, Heinz valued the transaction, which it called the largest in its industry's history, at $28 billion. Berkshire and 3G will pay $72.50 per share, a 19 percent premium to the stock's previous all-time high.

When it comes to those last globs of ketchup inevitably stuck to every bottle of Heinz, most people either violently shake the container in hopes of eking out another drop or two, or perform the "secret" trick: smacking the "57" logo on the bottle’s neck. But not MIT PhD candidate Dave Smith. He and a team of mechanical engineers and nano-technologists at the Varanasi Research Group have been held up in an MIT lab for the last two months addressing this common dining problem. The result? LiquiGlide, a "super slippery" coating made up of nontoxic materials that can be applied...

No Jobs for U.S. workers declares Bill Johnson, CEO at Heinz, on Wall Street Journal Report last Saturday Last Saturday, the CEO of Heinz, best known for ketchup production, told Maria Bartiromo that Heinz will not be hiring Americans this year. The reason he gave was the ‘uncertainty’ produced by the ‘inability’ of the government to decide on really important things such as the tax rate his business will pay. He announced at the same time on the same program that Heinz will be opening facilities and hiring in other countries, and concentrated on China where they make soy sauce.