Private Equity Has A Hankering For Fast Food

The long, strange story of Burger King (NYSE:BKC) is soon to take another twist. The world's #2 hamburger chain announced Thursday morning that it had accepted a long-rumored bid from 3G Capital that will give current Burger King shareholders $24 in cash per share.

What a Long, Strange Trip it has Been
BurFor a large international restaurant chain, Burger King has had some ups and downs on the ownership front. The company was privately-owned for about eight years before Pillsbury bought it. Pillsbury had difficulty running the company and it became part of Grand Metropolitan (now Diageo (NYSE:DEO)) in 1989, when Grand Metropolitan bought Pillsbury.

Diageo built on Pillsbury's legacy of poor management with even more poor management, but decided to sell the chain at the turn of the century. A group of three well-known investors (a unit of Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), Bain Capital, and TPG Capital) bought the company, actually ran it reasonably well by prior standards and then took the company public in 2006. 


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