The merger of Kraft Foods and H.J. Heinz was agreed by the boards of both companies, with approval by shareholders and regulatory authorities in early 2015. The new Kraft Heinz Company became the world's fifth-largest food and beverage company and the third-largest in the United States. The Kraft Heinz co-headquarters are in Chicago at the Aon Center and in Pittsburgh at PPG Place, with other offices across the United States, Canada, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The companies completed the merger on July 2, 2015. The merger did not affect the naming rights to Heinz Field, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers. On February 17, 2017, it was reported that Kraft Heinz Co. had made a $143 billion approach to take over the British-Dutch multinational Unilever, a significantly larger competitor with 126,000 more employees and £24bn larger revenue than Kraft Heinz. Unilever declined the initial proposal. The takeover was subsequently abandoned on 19 February soon after UK Prime Minister Theresa May had ordered a scrutiny of the deal. In May 2018, Kraft Heinz launched Springboard Brands, a business focused on growing organic, natural, and "super-premium" food brands. Later that year, it was announced Kraft Heinz would acquire the Primal Kitchen brand as part of the company's Springboard Incubator. The $200 million deal was completed in early 2019 and was expected to generate $50 million in new annual revenue. In July 2018, Kraft Heinz announced it was committing to make all of its global packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025. In April 2019, it was announced Miguel Patricio, former Chief Marketing Officer of InBev would replace Bernardo Hees as CEO of Kraft Heinz. Patricio took position of CEO in late June 2019 and Alex Behring remained chairman of the company. Later that year, Paulo Basilio returned to his role at Chief Financial Officer and Corrado Azzarita assumed the position of Chief Information Officer.
Brands
As of 2020, in addition to both Kraft and Heinz, many more global brands are included in the Kraft Heinz portfolio:
For the fiscal year 2017, Kraft Heinz reported earnings of 11.0 billion, with an annual revenue of 26.2 billion, a decline of 0.6% over the previous fiscal cycle. Kraft Heinz's shares traded at over $61 per share, and its market capitalization was valued at over 136 billion in September 2018. In February 2019, shares in Kraft Heinz fell to a record low of under $35, after the company reported a $10.2bn loss for the previous year as the company announced that it would take a $15.4 billion write down of its Kraft and Oscar Meyer brands, slashed its dividend, and acknowledged that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had opened a probe into its accounting practices. In August 2019 Kraft Heinz announced a further $1.22 billion in write downs. In August 2019, Kraft Heinz announced it was bringing back its former CFO, Paulo Basilio, who had served in the position until 2017, to replace David Knopf, saying it wanted a "seasoned veteran" in the job following a series of accounting errors.
