Burger King on the menu for investors

BURGER King is once again offering investors the chance to take a bite out of its equity less than two years after it was taken private.

The world’s second biggest hamburger chain, which was British owned throughout the 1990s, said it plans to float on the New York Stock Exchange within the next three months in a complicated listing. It will be chaired by former treasury minister Lord Myners, and will have former Whitbread boss Alan Parker as a non-executive director.

The firm, which operates more than 12,000 mainly franchised fastfood outlets and is famous for its Whopper burger, was bought by private equity firm 3G Capital in September 2010 in a £2bn deal.

It is currently refreshing the chain’s menu with salads and smoothies as it battles with archrival Mcdonalds for domination of the fast food market.

The private equity firm reckons the menu change will deliver double its 2010 operating profit in 2012 and it said this was behind the firm’s rapid return to public life.

Daniel Schwartz, finance chief of Burger King Worldwide, said: ‘We believe this is the right time for Burger King to be publicly traded in the US again.’

In a complex financial manoeuvre, 3G will ill sell a 29pc stake in the business to a London- quoted holding company called Justice Holdings which was set up in February specifically to make deals.

The £880m transaction saw Justice delist yesterday ahead of its expected reappearance on the NYSE in three months time. 3G firm will retain a 71pc stake in Burger King which Schwartz claims will be worth around £5bn – more than double what 3G paid in 2010.

It first opened in 1953 in Jacksonville, Florida, as Insta-burger King. It became part of the Pillsbury food empire in 1967 only to be gobbled up by British firm Grand Metropolitan in 1989. When Guinness merged with Grand Met in 1997 to form Diageo, Burger King was spat out to private equity.