Deals
Mars Buys Out Buffett Preferred Stake That Paid 5% Dividend
- Candy maker simplifies ownership to unify chocolate, gum units
- Buffett helped finance Mars’s 2008 deal to acquire Wrigley
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Mars Inc. is buying out the $2.1 billion preferred stake that Warren Buffett held in its Wrigley chewing gum business as the candy company seeks to simplify its ownership and reduce interest expenses.
The repurchase accelerates Mars’s exit from securities on which it had to pay a 5 percent annual dividend to Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. The closely held candy maker was allowed to start redeeming half the stake this month, Berkshire said in a filing in August. Mars instead struck a deal for an “early buyout,” the company said in a statement Thursday that didn’t disclose terms.