NOBULL: Bourgeois Pigs Make the Best Sausage – “Smithfield Bosses to Get $85.4 Million from Chinese Deal”

China — directly or indirectly — will pay American executives as much as it takes for as long as it takes.

And then? Well, in the case of this Smithfield deal, I guess we’ll find out if bourgeois pigs really do make the best sausages.

"Smithfield Bosses to Get $85.4 Million from Chinese Deal"

www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-31/smithfield-bosses-to-get-85-4-million-from-chinese-deal.html

  • Five executives who run one of the worst-performing large U.S. food makers are set to reap at least $85.4 million from its sale.
  • CEO C. Larry Pope owns stock valued at $25.4 million based on the $34-per-share offer price. Pope would also get $11 million for his share options — according to a proxy filing which based its calculation on the company changing hands on April 29, 2012 when the stock was 38 percent lower than the price Shuanghui agreed to last week.
  • Smithfield senior managers will stay on after the takeover — this despite Smithfield having posted a negative return of 18 percent in the five years through March 28.
  • If their employment is terminated during the takeover or within two years of this change of ownership, the executives stand to reap even more. Total compensation and share sales would be at least $126.4 million.
  • Last year, Smithfield’s CEO, COO, CFO, and chairman were together the second-highest paid group of senior managers in the U.S. food industry.

I will fondly remember them, a Gang of Four.

By the way, what about all those dead pigs in Chinese rivers? Wouldn’t it be interesting if some inscrutable bureaucrat has known all along what killed them?

Bob