NOT MANY consumers have heard of 3G Capital, an investment fund, but it controls some of the planet's best-known brands, including Heinz, Budweiser and Burger King. In the business world 3G has become widely admired for buying venerable firms and using debt and surgical cost-cuts to boost their financial returns. But after Kraft Heinz, a 3G firm, revealed a $i2.6bn quarterly loss on February 21st what appeared to be a successful strategy suddenly looks like a fiasco. The implications reach beyond Kraft Heinz. In total, 3G-run firms owe at least $15obn (3G's founders hold direct stakes in some firms while others are held by 3G's investment funds; for simplicity, it makes sense to lump them together and call them 3G). Notable investors have got not just egg, but ketchup, on their faces-Warren Buffett's investment firm, Berkshire Hathaway, lost $2.7bn on its Kraft Heinz shares in 2018. There is a queasy sense that 3G's approach of dealmaking, squeezing costs and heavy debts, can be found at an alarming number of other firms.
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