March 30th all bids in
April 1st any objections to bids
April 3rd sale hearing
This was all filed yesterday...all bids for plants will include if potential buyer would accept or reject cba's and certain debt and leases of the company
7 replies (most recent on top)
Now if only Stoppy and Food Lion would buy a plant. Meanwhile school milk is nonexistent.
Stop n shop/food lion filed a statement today that the attorney general would not agree to the sale of dean's to dfa citing major antitrust issues...looks like the story that dean and dfa gave about the doj having no problem with the sale was a bunch of b.s.
I don't disagree with many comments, but if not DFA, who is going to buy us?. When you look at the current environment the chances of the company being split up into say 8-10 different buyers is unlikely. Many locations are struggling, ultimately IMO I do expect DFA to still own a major portion of our business or many locations will be closed with no buyer
You have no idea how many complained to the DOJ's anitrust division about this sham takeover. Bond and noteholders, stockholders, farmers and their groups, grocery chains, milk co-ops, and other milk processors. Everyone knows DFA is a market manipulator and price fixer that was caught screwing farmers and consumers many times. DOJ absolutely wouldn't have allowed this to happen given that they themselves cited both Deans and DFA in the past, letting folks sue both these entities successfully in court. Of course, those lawsuits were "settled" but still the ugly history is well known to everyone.
Well Deans/DFA lying to the judge about how the anti-trust stuff was trivial and they were working with the DOJ to sort it out when the DOJ said this is a major issue and Deans/DFA told us to pound sand put the judge in a tough spot. He can't side with DFA knowing they lied about the DOJ, especially when the DOJ will step in a shut the DFA sale down.
Finally? Everyone has known that the proposed Stalking Horse deal was a scam when it came out weeks ago. Surprising thing here is that the judge known for rubber stamping almost all similar deals didn't rubber stamp this one.
Is this good or bad for us? Still to be determined.
No one was going to bid on anything that was part of the DFA deal if their Stalking Horse proposal was approved because the cost would have been too high and stacked in DFA's favor. Now might see a lot more bids and less plants ending up with DFA which may take them off the radar of DOJ. Although the whole anti-trust issue might end up getting pushed aside no matter what due to the impact of the virus hysteria- which unfortunately may also limit the number of companies that would have been willing to put in bids a month ago and maybe won't now.
But this wasn't done for the employees. It was done to try and get creditors more money.
Finally things became clear that Dean's and DFA were trying to do a preconceived underhand scam under that STALKING HORSE deal. Now that the games are over let's all hope for the best 😃