[Otter]

Some others as well.

And both Obama and McCain are more than happy to hold open the door for these "investors".

I don't have enough faith in our government to get us out of this or in the majority of its citizens to look past what television wants them to know to vote the right people in office either.

American icons owned abroad: Falling dollar, cheaper U.S. assets spurring trend of foreign ownership

Posted Jul 10th 2008 11:37AM by Carol Vinzant
Filed under: International markets, India, Middle East, Anheuser-Busch Cos (BUD), Unilever ADR (UL), Israel

Imagine this typical American strip mall: a Trader Joe's, a Sunglass Hut, a Caribou Coffee. Maybe there's a restaurant that serves hot dogs with French's mustard, and a choice of Good Humor ice cream or homemade Toll House chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Across the street is a CITGO, Shell and a 7-Eleven.

All this sounds so American. It could -- and does -- exist all across the country. Yet all of these companies and brands are foreign-owned.

Some of these marquee names were always foreign-owned, but overseas firms are increasingly buying up American properties. Most recently, beer drinkers were shocked when Belgian beer juggernaut InBev put the moves on Anheuser-Busch (NYSE: BUD), which is trying to fend off the bid. How could InBev attempt to turn Budweiser into just another of its stable of international brands? We were surprised not only that those European beer snobs even liked our watery brew, but by the apparent ease with which foreigners could try to snap up American icons.

It's not just American brands and companies getting sold. Foreign companies were the buyers in four of the top 13 U.S. commercial real estate deals in 2007, according to Real Estate Alert newsletter. Another foreign acquisition of notable Manhattan real estate was the Dubai-based Jumeirah group's 2006 purchase of the Essex House on Central Park South.


The falling dollar, a decline in stock prices in the U.S. and flow of capital to oil-rich nations in the Middle East has spurred the trend of foreign purchases of U.S. assets, explains merger expert Tom Taulli, who recently dubbed it a euro-vasion.

Read on to learn about more iconic American brands, companies and properties that are currently -- or could soon be -- owned abroad.

Toll House cookies: Nestlé, a Swiss company, is the owner of the Toll House brand of chocolate morsels, baking supplies and cookie dough. But Toll House cookies are an American invention. Ruth Wakefield owned the Toll House Inn outside Whitman, Massachusetts, and baked colonial-inspired desserts. Her big hit was a butter cookie that she flavored with bits of a Nestlé chocolate bar. In the mid-1900s, she and Nestlé struck a bargain. They could use the Toll House name and in return she got a lifetime supply of chocolate. In 1939, Nestlé started selling chocolate in convenient "chip" size for Toll House cookies.

Nestlé SA (NSRGF) started in 1866 with a baby milk formula, then expanded to chocolate in the 1920s. Other iconic American brands it now owns are Stouffer's, Baby Ruth candy bar, Bit-o-Honey, Chunky, Raisinettes, Sno-Caps, Carnation, PowerBar, Ralston-Purina and Gerber.

CITGO: This large oil company, with familiar gas and convenience stores around the country, was started by an American oilman, but is now owned by the government of Venezuela. Henry Doherty started Cities Service Company in 1910 as more of a wholesaler of gas and electricity than an oil company. In 1965 the company started calling itself CITGO. In 1986 Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), the national oil company of Venezuela, bought half the stock. Then in 1990 it bought the other half. Dueling email campaigns have urged consumers to either buy or boycott CITGO to either protest our dependence on Mideast oil or on Hugo Chavez.

Good Humor: Harry Burt, a Youngstown, Ohio, candy maker, got the idea to put chocolate-coated ice cream on a stick in 1921. He sent neatly dressed Good Humor men to sell the bars from white trucks. Lipton bought Good Humor in 1965. Unilever PLC (NYSE: UL), the British-Dutch conglomerate, had bought Lipton in 1937. Unilever is now the world's biggest ice cream maker. It also owns Ben & Jerry's and Breyers.

French's Mustard: It's not French, it's British. This American brand, created by brothers with the last name French, was invented for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, which also brought us the hot dog. But French's mustard was first introduced as a salad topping. During the anti-France fury at the start of the Iraq War, French's made a point of telling the world: "For the record, French's would like to say there is nothing more American than French's Mustard." Except that it's owned by Reckitt Benckiser, a British conglomerate, which also owns Lysol and Woolite.

Frigidaire: An Indiana inventor made the first refrigerator that didn't need ice in 1915, but his company couldn't produce it efficiently. General Motors bought the company and rechristened it Frigidaire. White Consolidated Industries snapped up Frigidaire and other floundering appliance makers in the 1970s. Then Sweden's AB Electrolux bought it in 1986.

Tretorn, Adidas, Puma: Adolph Drassler basically invented sneakers in 1920 and started the Drassler company with his brother, Rudolph. After a fight, Rudolph founded Puma and Adolph renamed the company using his nickname Adi and the first part of his last name. Adidas for a while was under control of the French and Robert Louis-Dreyfus, cousin of Julia. It's now German and owns Reebok. Puma bought Tretorn, the classic preppy shoe, which was originally Swedish.

Plaza Hotel: This National Historic Landmark, where fictional Eloise lived, has passed through many hands over the years, including Hilton's and Trump's. After Donald Trump's divorce from wife Ivana, who was the Plaza's president, Donald sold the hotel for $325 million in 1995 to a partnership between Saudi Prince Al-Walid and Singapore-owned Millennium & Copthorne Hotels. Now it's owned by Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva's El-AdGroup.

Flatiron Building: Daniel Burnham's 1902 Flatiron Building has been a National Historic Landmark since 1989. Italian real estate investor Valter Mainetti, who likes to collect trophy properties, bought a share of the Flatiron in 2006, then recently brought his share up to 53%.

Chrysler Building: Many New Yorkers consider the Chrysler Building the prettiest in the city. Briefly the world's tallest building, this 1928 Art Deco gem has gargoyles designed for its original tenant, the Chrysler Corporation. Cooper Union, a private college, owns the land and leases it out. In the 1950s Chrysler lost control of the building. TMW, the German arm of an Atlanta fund, bought most of the lease in 2001. Now the Abu Dhabi Investment Council controls 75%.

Caribou Coffee: A Minneapolis couple thought up Caribou Coffee on their honeymoon trip out West. They opened their first shop in 1992. Six years later they sold out to the predecessor of Arcapita, which is backed by the Bahrain-based First Islamic Investment Bank. Arcapita, which conforms to Sharia Law, also owns Church's Chicken.

Trader Joe's: The original Trader Joe was 26-year-old Joe Coulombe, a manager at Rexall Drug, which wanted to get into convenience stores. In the sixties Joe bought the chain from Rexall, changed the name and concentrated on offering affordable, exotic foods with a healthy and environmental bent and tropical décor. German billionaires Karl and Theo Albrecht, who owned ALDI, bought him out in 1979 but kept him as CEO.

7-Eleven: The Southland Ice Company started selling food at off hours to customers in 1927. By 1946 -- long before the concept of 24/7 -- the company changed the store name to 7-Eleven to advertise its long hours. The founder tried to buy out the company but got caught in the market crash of 1987. His largest franchisee, Japan's Ito-Yokado, got equity and now its parent, Seven and I, owns 7-Eleven.

Holiday Inn: A Memphis family driving to D.C. was appalled by local motels, so the father, Kemmons Wilson, already an entrepreneur and builder, vowed to start his own chain. He opened the first Holiday Inn -- named after the Bing Crosby movie -- in 1952. The green neon signs sprang up around the country, luring weary travelers with the promise of consistent quality. He retired 27 years later and then the firm was bought by Brits from Bass (as in the beer), a company that later morphed into InterContinental Hotels Group.

Dial Soap: Armour, the Chicago meatpacking company, sold, canned and used the byproduct tallow to make soap. When they added a germicide in 1948, Armour branded the soap Dial because you could wear it for 24 hours -- or around the dial. The company went through many corporate machinations, was owned by Greyhound for a while, and in 2004 the Dial Corporation was bought by conglomerate Henkel KGaA, based in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Campton Place Hotel, San Francisco: The elegant Campton Place Hotel on San Francisco's Union Square has been a landmark and sanctuary in the city for decades. In 2007 it sold for $58 million -- or $527,000 a room -- to Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, a luxury lodging arm of India's Tata Group. Tata also owns another California favorite, Good Earth Tea.

Puget Sound Energy, Seattle? Australian investment bank Macquarie is leading a group that's trying to buy Washington State's Puget Sound Energy for $7.8 billion. Consumers are wary of how much debt the company would have after a leveraged buyout.

Chicago Midway? The Second City's second airport is on the block. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, a huge fan of privatization, hopes to get billions for a 50-year lease. The FAA has a pilot program for airport privatization that allows five regular airports and one hub to privatize. Midway wants to be the one hub and has made progress getting airline approval. Six groups are competing -- five of them are foreign. The nationalities involved include Spanish, Australian, German, Canadian and French.

Shell: It's hard to imagine a Dutch company called Koninklijke Nederlandsche Petroleum Maatschappij becoming a household name in the U.S., so call it by its nickname: Shell, or the more formal Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A). The Shell nickname comes from a British trading company that specialized in Asian shells in the 1830s, then turned to oil. The Royal Dutch part comes from an oil company started in 1890 and merged with Shell in 1907.

T-Mobile: The one thing consistent in T-Mobile's decade and a half history has been grating TV ads starring first Jamie Lee Curtis, then Catherine Zeta-Jones. What hasn't been consistent is its name or nationality. The company started as Western Wireless, which merged then spun off as VoiceStream Wireless. In 2001 it was bought and rebranded by Deutsche Telekom, the publicly traded remnant of the former state-owned German telephone company.

Firestone: Henry Firestone started the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio, in 1900. The company expanded rapidly across the country and into all kinds of other businesses. In the 1970s the company had to pay the then-largest corporate fine ever after its radial tires were blamed in 34 deaths. The company cut back radically and sold itself to Japan's Bridgestone in 1988.

Sunglass Hut: Optometrist Sanford Ziff opened a kiosk in Dadeland Mall, Miami, in 1971, hoping to sell luxury sunglasses. He sold off part of the business to expand, then cashed out completely after two decades. The company gobbled up rivals and expanded overseas. In 2001 Italian eyewear seller Luxottica Group bought it.

The Indiana Toll Road: Indiana calls itself the "Crossroads of America." The Indiana Toll Road -- otherwise known as part of the cross-continental Route 80 -- links the Midwest to the East Coast. The state of Indiana built the road in 1965, then leased it to a joint venture of Spain's Cintra and Australia's Macquarie for $3.8 billion in 2006 for 75 years. Truckers boycotted for a while and now drivers are complaining about long toll lines. In 2008 the cash toll was raised from $4.65 to $8 to ride the whole 157 miles.

Chicago Skyway: If you keep driving on the Indiana Toll Road towards Chicago, you'll hit the Chicago Skyway, which was leased by the same Australian-Spanish consortium for $1.83 billion for a 99-year lease starting in 2005. The Chicago Tribune reports that when residents feel underserved, they continue to ask what the city did with all the money.

Pennsylvania Turnpike? For the last two years Pennsylvania has been mulling over whether to offer a 75-year lease for its turnpike. If it does, the leading contenders are foreign. The deal has hit a snag because of analysis that shows the highest bid of $12.8 billion from a Spanish company is too low and would likely result in higher tolls and lower infrastructure funding.

Of course Americans, too, are buying up brands and businesses around the world -- as well as strewing brands like McDonald's, Coca-Cola and Walt Disney across the globe. The Commerce Department says foreign direct investment gives jobs to at least five million Americans. Seen in that context, all that money pouring in from abroad is something Americans can feel proud of.