Thursday, February 22, 2007

I Admire this Man and His Business Savvy

image from Forbes.com
I don't usually talk about individual stocks. One reason, I am not qualified to recommend and (2) I don't have the cash to invest. However, the guy that bought the Kansas company that I work for, back in the 1990's in order to get a hold of the Food4Less name, has made another play. He later sold my company to a Kansas City co-op and most of the rest of the stores that he built or bought out in California to Kroger.

After stocking up on shares of Wild Oats Markets, Ronald W. Burkle is set to check out at a tidy profit. Whole Foods Market, the natural-foods grocer, agreed Wednesday to pay $565 million for Wild Oats, a smaller competitor whose largest shareholder is Mr. Burkle’s investment firm, Yucaipa. At $18.50 per share, Whole Foods’ offer values Yucaipa’s nearly 18 percent stake at about $94.4 million. Yucaipa paid about $54 million, net of commissions, for its 5.1 million shares, regulatory filings show.

Yucaipa has already agreed to tender its shares under Whole Foods’ offer, the companies said Wednesday.


Despite Burkle's politics I admire him as a brilliant businessman, much the same as Warren Buffett. With that I would very much be interested in buying stocks in Whole Foods.

3 comments:

  1. What do you dislike about Burkle's politics?

    For some reason I assumed you were a Dem.

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  2. nope, not a Dem...very much hard-core active in another party, which you might figure out better from my political blog, as I get ready to fully relaunch it in the next few weeks. Right now there is only 3 posts, on the site.

    ReplyDelete