Posted on 07/25/2025 9:56:30 PM PDT by Cronos
Ferrero, the Italian candy maker, has agreed to acquire WK Kellogg, the American cereal giant, in a deal valued at $3.1 billion, the companies announced on Thursday.
The takeover would combine Ferrero, a family-owned company that makes Tic Tacs, Ferrero Rocher candies and Nutella spreads, with the producer of Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops, Rice Krispies and other cereals. It represents Ferrero’s latest push to grow its business in North America following a series of acquisitions in recent years, including buying Nestlé’s U.S. confectionary business in 2018.
The deal would expand Ferrero’s presence in North America and help the company move beyond its candy and snack offerings,Lapo Civiletti, the chief executive of the Italian group, said in a statement.
...WK Kellogg was created in 2023 when the Kellogg Company spun it off as an independent company. The larger remaining business, which focused on snacks like Pringles and Cheez-It, was renamed Kellanova.
Mars, the company behind M&M’s and Snickers, agreed last year to acquire Kellanova in a deal valued at $35.9 billion.
Last month, the Federal Trade Commission approved that deal — a signal that the Trump administration’s antitrust regulators might take a less aggressive approach to merger enforcement than their Biden administration predecessors. The timing of Ferrero’s latest U.S. acquisition is “likely based on a struggling share price for WK Kellogg and the F.T.C.’s approval without conditions of Mars’s acquisition of Kellanova,” said Brad Haller, a senior partner at West Monroe.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
![]() |
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
For me, if a food item has more than 5 ingredients, I don't buy
Total Shiite foods. Require a very loud Barf Aleert.
Sad that people feed this krep to their kids.
Don’t believe it? Read the labels. Check Morton’s Salt. Yup! Dextrose.
I’m diabetic so meh,doesn’t really affect me either way.
CC
Unfrosted, the cereal movie starring Jerry Seinfeld, about toaster pastries.
Anyone else get sucked into watching this colossal stinker?
Cockroaches, GrapeNuts and Pop tarts, all will survive a nuclear war.
Remember the SNL skit about “Rocks” (GrapeNuts. You’ve got to let them soak in milk overnight.)
Only safe for Conrad Poohs to chew. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D2lTMiQsMH1g&ved=2ahUKEwjA9ajO9tmOAxVdrokEHYFXBScQwqsBegQIDBAE&usg=AOvVaw2JicrZQmhssdW-TCrYJIhv
Free market capitalism works most efficiently when barriers to entry are few and the number of competitors are many. When an industry is highly competitive, with many competing for customers, prices are low and innovation is high as companies bring new products to market in order to gain a competitive edge. The customer is king in competitive markets.
When markets consolidate into a few big players, competition and innovation decline. Large companies buy earnings growth by acquiring competitors, not innovating. They also use financial engineering such as cutting costs by cutting quality, outsource production to low labor cost countries, drive earnings per share by investing free cash in stock buybacks instead of new products. In addition large companies in highly concentrated industries use their financial power to influence politicians and bureaucrats to pass favorable laws and create favorable regulations which increase the cost of entry for potential new competitors.
Anti trust laws were passed at the dawn of the 20th century to break up the corporate trusts that dominated nearly every industry and stifled competition. Since the 1980’s antitrust policy has been lax, allowing large corporations to grow into industry dominant mega corporations such as Pfizer in pharmaceuticals, Verizon and ATT in communications, Boeing in commercial aircraft, Walmart and Amazon in retailing, Google in internet search, etc. . In 2025 we have fewer competitors in nearly every industry than in 1980.
Should we return to an era where big corporations are broken up and government imposed barriers to formation of new companies are removed? Who benefits more from the Kellogg acquisition, the American consumer or a large foreign corporation?
I started watching it, then dropped off after about 30 minutes
Imho, working as a contractor to some of these providing data analytics, they spend more figuring out how to squeeze the consumer rather than innovation.
Case in point: Colgate. 90% of the ingredients for all of their products are the same, but the “premium” ones cost thrice as much as the base models. And in stors the base models are kept at the bottom of the shelf.
Dextrose is only added to salt that has potassium iodide added to it: dextrose stabilizes potassium iodide. Salt that does not have potassium iodide added to it does not have dextrose in it. The amount of dextrose in iodized table salt is typically 0.04% (that’s 0.04% - four parts in ten thousand, not four parts in one hundred). That’s why you still see 0g of total carbohydrates per serving in the salt label you show even though the salt has dextrose in it.
I’ve been calling that crap “breakfast candy” for some time. Seems I was right all along.
I think it is only the North American rights to the cereal brands and not the international rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg%27s
Not sure why buy the North American rights. They should seek to buy the international rights from Mars.
Nut Loops? You’re supposed to eat those?
I didn’t know that! Thank you for the information
“Total Shiite foods. Require a very loud Barf Aleert.”
Agree. If RFK simply drops the hammer on carbs, the Italians will see the $3 Billion going into the trash can.
Dextrose stabilizes the iodine
I use salt with no added iodine. Do we really need this kind of stealth supplementation anymore?
/nonsense
Good summary.
I’d add that multinational corporations tend toward undermining national sovereignty.
Lol
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.