Butterfinger is owned by Ferrero (Italy), which acquired the brand on 31 March 2018 from Nestlé, as part of a $2.8 billion deal that also included Baby Ruth and Crunch.[1] Before Ferrero, Butterfinger was owned by Nestlé from 1990 to 2018.[1]
This ownership is reported in official statements but has not yet been matched to a regulatory filing.
Evidence: Ferrero Group — our brands. Last checked .
Butterfinger is an American candy bar created in 1923, with a flaky peanut butter core in chocolate, and named through a public competition. Ferrero bought Nestlé's United States confectionery business including Butterfinger in 2018 and reformulated the recipe, which drew complaints from long-standing buyers.
Controlling ownership as of . Brands grouped under the entity that owns them; large groups are collapsed.
Open the full Ferrero ownership tree →
See the full Ferrero brand portfolio (23) →
Ferrero controls 23 brands on Brandtree, 23 of them in food.
The 131 brands in chocolate on Brandtree belong to 45 owners. The largest is Mars, with 9; Ferrero has 6.
| Brand | Owner | Owner based in |
|---|---|---|
| Bounty | Mars | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Cadbury | Mondelēz | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Danusia | Wawel | 🇵🇱 Poland |
| Elizabeth Shaw | Colian | 🇵🇱 Poland |
| Almond Joy | Hershey | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Caffarel | Lindt & Sprüngli | 🇨🇭 Switzerland |
| Eitt Sett | Nói Síríus | 🇮🇸 Iceland |
| Águila | Arcor | 🇦🇷 Argentina |
Ferrero is a family-owned company headquartered in Alba, Italy, founded in 1946. Brandtree records 23 brands under its control.
Ferrero was founded by pastry maker Pietro Ferrero in Alba, Piedmont in 1946, where wartime cocoa shortages led him to stretch chocolate with local hazelnuts. It remains family-owned through a Luxembourg holding company and has expanded into American biscuits and ice cream by acquisition.
Brandtree records a controlling owner for 2,549 brands that began in the United States. 478 of them (19%) are now controlled by a company headquartered in another country, Butterfinger among them.
Nestlé sold its United States confectionery business, including Butterfinger, Baby Ruth, Crunch and around twenty other brands, to Ferrero. Nestlé kept its confectionery businesses in every other market.
The parent company of Butterfinger is Ferrero, a family-owned company headquartered in Italy.
Butterfinger originated in the United States in 1923, but it is owned today by Ferrero, which is headquartered in Italy. So Butterfinger is an American-origin brand under Italian ownership.
Ferrero completed its acquisition of Butterfinger on 31 March 2018, after announcing the deal on 16 January 2018. The deal, which also included Baby Ruth and Crunch, was valued at $2.8 billion (enterprise value).
Before Ferrero, Butterfinger was owned by Nestlé from 1990 until 2018.
Yes. As of 25 September 2026, Butterfinger is still owned by Ferrero. The ownership record was last checked against primary sources on that date.
Last verified . Every ownership fact above is backed by one of these primary documents. Numbers in brackets in the text refer to this list.
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