Ben Venue out of business Bedford Ohio 1100 folks

Radio and company announcement ^ | 10/04/2013 | Self

[reed13k]

Don’t disagree that they had issues, and needed to resolve them. I know someone from there that also said their older facilities would have taken significant work to upgrade. Spent 350M to bring things in line, and estimated more than that to finish the process...thus closing the shop.

There “voluntary” shutdown is called a consent decree - which is basically the regulators saying: if you don’t agree with us in court on the steps you’ll take, then we’ll lock your doors and confiscate all your product. You get to negotiate the details, but you will “volunteer”.

But the ability to resolve those issues is limited due to the regulatory scheme currently in place. There is a proscribed method for anything and everything and ridiculous amounts of documentation even though the answers are often obvious. Most of which provides limited value while adding termendous cost and resulting in shortcuts elsewhere to offset the burden. There’s a time and place for different tools and documentation, but the requirements have reached an onorus level.

I don’t doubt they had silly stupid things they were doing. But the industry is under serious threat from a number of angles.