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The iconic Wonderbread, once in jeopardy after Hostess declared bankruptcy, seems likely to return to store shelves under a new brand. A $390 million bid from Flower Foods Inc., for six of the Twinkie maker’s bread brands, was the leading bid on Friday. Flower Foods, which is based in Thomasville, Ga., is best known for making Tastykakes, which are cream filled chocolate cupcakes. The company also makes breads, including Nature’s Own and Cobblestone Mill. Higher competing bids can still be made before the final deal is approved in bankruptcy court. Flower Foods made a $360 million bid for Wonder Bread,...

Planned layoffs at U.S. firms rose for the third month in a row in November, partly driven by the bankruptcy of Hostess Brands, a report showed on Thursday. Employers announced 57,081 job cuts last month, the highest level since May and up nearly 20 percent from 47,724 in October, according to the report from consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. November's job cuts were also up 34.4 percent from the 42,474 seen a year ago. Employers have announced 490,806 cuts in 2012, lower than 2011's total of 606,082 layoffs. The recent surge in layoffs is at least partly attributed to...

Who's looking to snatch up Hostess Brands following the company's plans to liquidate? According to Bloomberg, Walmart and Kroger are among the two dozen bidders interested in the maker of Twinkies, Ho Hos and Wonder Bread. Citing a person familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reports the two companies, along with Grupo Bimbo and Alpha Baking, have placed bids on Hostess' assets. The source says some of the bids are for all of the assets, while others are just for the cakes or breads businesses. Some bidders, meanwhile, are only seeking to acquire Hostess' plants. Should the liquidation sale go through,...

FARGO, N.D. — Their ranks thinned by a 16-month lockout, American Crystal Sugar Co. workers on Saturday rejected a contract for the fourth time. Contract opponents say the sugar beet processor’s five-year contract offer would cut health care benefits and weaken job security and seniority protections. The company says the offer would raise worker pay by 17 percent over five years when a $2,000 signing bonus is taken into account. Leaders of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International union said in a news release that the workers voted 55 percent to reject management’s contract offer. “By now...

New York - Hostess Brands got final approval for its wind-down plans in bankruptcy court Thursday, setting the stage for its roster of snack cakes to find a second life with new owners - even as 18,000 jobs will be wiped out. The company said in court that it's in talks with 110 potential buyers for its iconic brands, which also include Ding Dongs and Ho Hos. The suitors include at least five national retailers, such as supermarkets, according to a financial adviser for the company. The process has been "so fast and furious," Hostess hasn't been able to make...

Five years ago while driving my son Sam to The University of Kansas, we stopped to get gas off the I-70 in the western part of the state. There was a rather large market adjacent to the gas pumps which we entered to buy some drinks. There was a massive display of Hostess products. The entire family of delicious treats was on there – Twinkies, Cupcakes, Ding-Dongs, Fruits Pies and Snowballs. I knew I was no longer in California as I never see them in health-obsessed Los Angeles. Now they will all be gone unless someone buys them out of...

Some of the company’s $2 billion in unfunded liabilities could get dumped on the federally sponsored Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), raising premiums for the many solvent companies that are obliged to participate. Worse yet, a lot of Hostess’s liability is to union “multiemployer” plans, which under a peculiarly onerous federal law follow a “last-man-standing” rule of liability under which companies still operating are made to pick up the obligations of those no longer in business. David Kaplan at Fortune quotes a Credit Suisse report to the effect that multiemployer plans “are now underfunded by $369 billion.” [Ivan Osorio, CEI]

Let's get a few things clear. Hostess didn't fail for any of the reasons you've been fed. It didn't fail because Americans demanded more healthful food than its Twinkies and Ho-Hos snack cakes. It didn't fail because its unions wanted it to die. It failed because the people that ran it had no idea what they were doing. Every other excuse is just an attempt by the guilty to blame someone else. Take the notion that Hostess was out of step with America's healthful-food craze. You'd almost think that Hostess failed because it didn't convert its product line into one...

The fake “reporters and journalists” we are forced to put up with have destroyed our sacred freedom of the press. Their lies and half-truths lead trusting readers to only the conclusions they want Americans to reach. The truth about the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers Union (BCTW&GMU) is a good example of the kind of information the fake media hides from us. The leadership of the BCTW&GMU is a gang of greedy crooks who are only concerned with filling up the trough they push their snouts into. That trough is constantly refilled with the dues money of workers...

Drat! I’m bummed—saddened by the news that the Hostess company, home of the Twinkie and other venerable sugary snacks, is shutting down. I’ll bet I haven’t eaten more than three or four Twinkies in the last 30 years, so the demise of Hostess doesn’t adversely impact my lifestyle. It’s just that, for baby boomers like me, the Twinkie has historic significance in popular culture. Being a kid in the ‘50s meant watching “The Mickey Mouse Club” and “The Lone Ranger” and snacking on Twinkies and Tootsie Rolls. Twinkies were as American as baseball. Now the company that makes them is...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:Nothing in my youth was more ubiquitous than Wonder Bread, Twinkies and the Hostess chocolate cupcake with its signature white frosting swirl on top. These cultural icons will soon go the way of the Dodo Bird thanks to Americas' contracting economy and union entitlements. According to the Teamsters Union, which represents 6,700 Hostess workers, the company demanded a 30% cut in worker's wages and benefits. The union responded by telling their members to strike."... We do not have the financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike," said Hostess Chief Executive Gregory Rayburn in a statement released to...

Everyone loses: •HOSTESS JUDGE APPROVES MOTION TO WIND DOWN COMPANY•HOSTESS WINS APPROVAL TO CLOSE AND BEGIN SELLING ASSETS Next up: the Twinkie economy. Fom Leveraged Loan: U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain this afternoon approved Hostess Brands’ emergency wind-down plan, as well as an amendment to its debtor-in-possession credit agreement that will allow Hostess to access the full amount of its $75 million DIP loan during its liquidation. Drain also denied a motion filed by the U.S. Trustee to convert the case to Chapter 7, though he did not rule out the prospect of a conversion at a later date. Hostess...

A corporate bankruptcy is a paper death. The underlying assets live on. Killers of paper structures, in this light, are devalued villains, but a cry has gone up to identify the villain behind the pending liquidation of Hostess Brands, maker of Twinkies, Devil Dogs, Wonder Bread and other déclassé delights. Everyone knows the answer: It was the bakers—i.e., the branch of the AFL-CIO formally known as the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union. The bakers are guilty of a perfectly justifiable attempted homicide. Don't believe any guff about how chubby Americans are gnawing on carrot sticks. Forget...

In the aftermath of the fall of Hostess, I thought it would be appropriate to spotlight America's most prolific Union thug, Richard Trumka. Caption this photo!: Trumka: "Hey you idiot, I'VE got the dibs on that last case of Twinkies."

<p>And that, economists say, may come down to one sweet little word: sugar.</p> <p>Since 1934, Congress has supported tariffs that benefit primarily a few handful of powerful Florida families while forcing US confectioners to pay nearly twice the global market price for sugar.</p>

Last week, when discussing the next steps for the company, and specifically the hope that mediation may resolve the epic animosity between management and workers, we stated that "What makes a mediation improbable is that the antagonism between the feuding sides has certainly hit a level of no return: "Several unions also objected to the company's plans, saying they made "a mockery" of laws protecting collective bargaining agreements in bankruptcy. The Teamsters, which represents 7,900 Hostess workers, said the company's plan would improperly cut the ability of remaining workers to use sick days and vacation." Sure enough, moments ago we...

Hostess Brands Inc. lived to die another day. The maker of Twinkies and Ding Dongs said late Tuesday that it failed to reach an agreement with its second biggest union. As a result, Hostess plans to continue with a hearing on Wednesday in which a bankruptcy court judge will decide if the company can shutter its operations. The renewed talks between Hostess and The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union came after the company declared last week that it would move to wind down its business and start selling off its assets in bankruptcy court. The company...

It will be ironic but fitting if the rights to the Twinkie and other treats end up being bought by Mexican bakery El Grupo Bimbo through bankruptcy liquidation. Growing up in Pittsburgh, union people are the greediest,entitlement minded people I have known in my lifetime. The only EXCEPTIONS I have personally known just happen to HATE being in the union and despise the lazy idiots more than anyone... (video) The union people who are actually WORTH the money they are paid - resent - that they have to pick up the slack for the idiots!

Hostess Brands Inc. said Tuesday night that mediation talks with its bakers union failed and the company will proceed with plans to close down and sell its assets.

Killing the goose that lays the golden egg is one of those old fairy tales for children which has a heavy message that a lot of adults should listen to. The labor unions which have driven the makers of Twinkies into bankruptcy, potentially destroying 18,500 jobs, could have learned a lot from that old children's fairy tale. Many people think of labor unions as organizations to benefit workers, and think of employers who are opposed to unions as just people who don't want to pay their employees more money. But some employers have made it a point to pay their...