Burger King, Tim Hortons deal is official with Warren Buffett's help; Amazon to buy Twitch; Durable goods orders fly in July
Durable goods orders had their biggest gain on record last month, on the strength on aircraft orders. The Commerce Department said durable goods orders rose 22.6% to $300.1 billion in July. Economists predicted a 5.1% increase last month. Orders for transportation equipment had their biggest jump ever to 74.2%, due in part to $80 billion in orders for Boeing airplanes. Excluding transportation, durable goods were down 0.8% in July.
It's official. Burger King (BKW) is buying Tim Hortons (THI) for about $11 billion, with Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) kicking in $3 billion of funding. It’s an inversion deal that would have Burger King’s headquarters move from the U.S. to Canada to get a lower corporate tax rate. Inversions have come under criticism from the Obama Administration and some members of Congress.
Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Aaron Task said the controversy over the tax inversion is a “sideshow.” And while Warren Buffett has in the past called on wealthy Americans to pay their fair share of taxes, Task said of Buffett: “He‘s not about investing in America. He’s about investing in making money.”
Amazon (AMZN) will acquire video-game streaming site Twitch for $970 million in cash. Twitch, which says it has 1.1 million broadcasters per month reaching 55 million viewers, offers live and on-demand video game-play, commentary and online shows. Twitch will be an independent subsidiary of Amazon.
