🠈  Burger King / Tim Hortons  🠊

Burger King / Tim Hortons

In August 2014, the Canadian Based Tim Hortons and Burger King merged in a popular new merger technique called "tax inversion."

In a tax inversion, a company in a high tax country acquires a company in a low tax country, then moves its official headquarters to the low tax country. In the Burger King / Tim Horton merger, Burger King moved from the United States to Canada.

At the time of the merger Burger King had 14,000 locations world wide. Most of the stores are franchises. Tim Horton's bakery and cafe boasted 4,592 restaurants in Canada and 807 in the United States. The company is often abbreviated as BK. The site BK Delivers lists Burger King franchises offering delivery services.

Burger King History

Burger King was founded in Jacksonville, Fl in 1953 by Keith J. Kramer and Matthew Burns who discovered that a device called an InstaBroiler did a good job cooking burgers. They called their chain "Insta-Burger King." This franchise fell into financial difficulties & was bought by its two main franchisers David Edgerton and James McLamore who renamed the company "Burger King" in 1954.

The company had grown to 250 franchises in 1967 when it was purchased by Pillsbury. Aggressive marketing in the 1970s led to "The Burger Wars" with McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's vying to dominate the fast food industry.

Pillsbury was acquired by Grand Metropolitan in 1989 which was then merged with Guinness in 1997. Burger King began to languish as a subsidiary. TPG Capital helped Burger King spin off in 2002 and the company went public in 2006 on the NYSE with the symbol BKC.

The financial crisis of 2007-2010 took its toll on the new company. TPG Capital sold its holdings to 3G Capital of Brazil after the merger, BKC was delisted.

In 2012, Burger King was relisted as BKW in a complex deal in which it bought a British firm called Justice Holdings. It changed the symbol to BKS and moved to the NYSE.

The 2014 "Tax Inversion" merger was arranged by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway. In the merger, Tim Horton's investors will own 22% of shares, Burger King will own 27% of the shares and Berkshire will hold $3 billion in preferred shares.

Tim Horton's History

Tim Horton's was founded as a doughnut shop in 1964 by Tim Horton (1930-1974), a Canadian hockey star, and Jim Charade. Ron Joyce joined the company in 1967. Joyce became head of Tim Horton's after Tim Horton died in a car crash in 1974.

Joyce expanded the Tim Horton chain aggressively and it became Canada's largest fast food franchise. The company removed the apostrophe from it's name in 1993 to satisfy sing laws of French speaking Quebec.

Recognizing that a donut shop could have a symbiotic relation with a burger joint, Tim Hortons merged with Wendy's in 1995. After the merger Joyce's share in Wendy's exceeded those of Wendy's founder Dave Thomas. Hortons spun off of Wendy's in 2005 and had a initial public offering in 2006 with the symbol THI.

The corporate headquarters of THI was originally in the tax haven state of Deleware. Tim Hortons was repatriated as a Canadian company in 2009.

The Tim Horton/Burger King merger is actually Tim Hortons second partnership with a burger joint.

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