Posted by
Playful Walrus on Thursday, July 12, 2007 6:58:04 PM
Wow,
stuff like this must really upset the hippie-commie types that frequent these places.
The
chief executive of Whole Foods Market Inc. wrote anonymous online
attacks against a smaller rival and questioned why anyone would buy its
stock, before Whole Foods announced an offer to buy the other company
this year, according to Federal Trade Commission documents.
The postings on Internet financial
forums, made under the name "rahodeb," said Wild Oats Markets Inc.
stock was overpriced. The statements predicted the company would fall
into bankruptcy and then be sold after its stock fell below $5 a share.
In February, Whole Foods announced it would buy Wild Oats for about $565 million, or $18.50 a share.
Scandal! It is bad enough that they are a successful...
business...(ick!)
but to have a CEO who does this? What a conflict for the hippies!
Where is Congress on this? By the way, I like Trader Joe's.
One
posting, from January 2005, questioned why anyone would buy shares of
Wild Oats at their price then of about $8 each, the Wall Street Journal
reported.
"Would Whole Foods buy [Wild Oats]?
Almost surely not at current prices," rahodeb wrote. "What would they
gain? [Their] locations are too small."
Rahodeb also said Boulder,
Colo.-based Wild Oats' management "clearly doesn't know what it is
doing." The company, he wrote, "has no value and no future."