Under new ownership, Heinz will both slim down and bulk up
Hunkering down at home is unlikely to be the limit of Heinz’s ambitions. Starting with Brazil’s second-biggest beer maker, Mr Lemann helped create the world’s biggest, most efficient brewer, AB InBev, through mergers and acquisitions with Belgium’s Interbrew and America’s Anheuser-Busch. Heinz is already global. It owns Foodstar, a Chinese soy-sauce maker, and Quero, a Brazilian ketchup company. Under new ownership it will start on its long-standing plan to become a big producer of baby food, reckons Ildiko Szalai of Euromonitor International, a research firm. The Swiss food giant Nestlé could sell baby-food businesses in Mexico, Thailand and elsewhere to satisfy competition authorities. Heinz is a likely buyer.
Heinz is a long way from being the AB InBev of food (it ranks 13th globally). But with Brazilians at the helm and Mr Buffett in the background it is likely to move up.
