Burger King is looking to buy Canada’s Tim Horton’s, a popular coffee and donut chain with stores everywhere in Canada. Burger King has lots of reasons to do the deal. First off the hottest competition in fast food right now is for your breakfast dollars. Taco Bell has been taking dead aim at McDonald’s in the breakfast wars lately–and McDonald’s, long the leader, looks vulnerable. Plus Tim Horton’s makes a decent cup of coffee–Burger King, not so much. Horton’s already has some stores in the states–old Dunkin’ Donuts locations in fact.
The proposed deal is also another instance of an American company looking for a tax break and using a strategy called “tax inversion” to avoid higher American corporate taxes. Burger King would move its base of operations to Canada after the deal. Inversion has been popular lately, but not everybody thinks its a smart move. Billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban recently warned that he’ll no longer invest in companies that leave the US to avoid taxes. Cuban has probably eaten his last Whopper.
