Posted on 03/25/2015 7:34:39 AM PDT by jimbo123
Thousands Of Layoffs Coming After Buffett Merges Heinz With Kraft, Creating 5th Largest Food Company In The World
Another day, another mega-M&A deal taking advantage of abnormally low bond rates, this time however not involving biotechs or a specialty pharma seeking to purchase a debt-free balance sheet, but one involving the Oracle of Omaha himself, and his Heinz investment, which will merge with Kraft Foods whose market cap was over $40 billion this morning on the news of the merger, and create the third largest food and beverage company in the US, and 5th largest in the world.
And while the resulting company will certainly be an unprecedented food giant, one which leaves the US food industry even more concentrated, here is the rationale behind the deal and the punchline for American workers: "significant synergy opportunities." Translation: thousands of layoffs imminent.
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
Layoffs? With this economy who can afford to eat anyway?
When I saw this headline I thought is was about someone accidentally pouring ketchup on the mac-and-cheese over at the Golden Corral.
Don’t you ever listen to our Dear Leader if you would, you should know how great this economy is. Everything is percolating full steam ahead.....I wish!
Truthfully, Kraft foods have become unedible. This merger will only water down an already watered down company.
jim... Does this mean Lurch loses his source of walkin’ around money?
Hey, my grandson loves ketchup on his mac and cheese (or anything else for that matter)!
Mergers between wireless or cable TV companies appear to get everyone’s knickers in a twist.
Mergers that create a food monopoly are met with a shrug.
Does Heinz or Kraft make cake?
but stockholders will be happy. and that’s all that matters. and if you disagree, you hate the free market and capitalism.
good jobs just don’t matter in today’s global economy. its all about Wall St. What’s good for Wall St is great for the American Working man!
brilliant!
I though everybody on on this board loves Jello and Kool-Aid.
A friend of my dad is the same. Ketchup on just about anything.
See post #7. He and his wife have been doing ‘great’ with that stock market ‘economy’. And I’m sure there were people winning big at poker aboard the Titanic too.
Shhh...don’t tell anyone but I was born and did some of my growing up in the Chicago area. My dad and the rest of us would use ketchup on our hot dogs! And we still do!!
Sorry to put it this way, but in a perfect free market economy, businesses would not be held hostage by expenses, certainly not labor expenses. Any “workforce” needed to run a business is a sign of inefficiency. The day will come when businesses run themselves with only strategic management — i.e. CEO, CFO, COO, and CIO (plus a couple of mkting VPs).
In a free market economy, “employment” is a sign of inefficiency.
“Mergers that create a food monopoly are met with a shrug.”
Not with me. This throws up a red flag of the highest order, and that Grandpa Warren is involved only confirms the red flag. Recall the Food Safety Bill quietly passed about five or so years ago that literally nobody saw fit to warn us about.
The laws and regs are designed to squeeze out the small farmer and consolidate production and distribution into a few crony capitalists’ hands, if I’m not mistaken.
Both companies have plants local to me. I know engineers in both places.
Lots of concern right now.
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