The Great Food Shake-Up: Why Industry Mergers Might Reshape Portfolios, Assuming the Deals Survive
I have always found the supermarket aisle to be a rather brutal arena. You are faced with a wall of brightly coloured boxes, all screaming for your attention. Behind that cardboard, an even more vicious game is playing out in the boardrooms of the world's biggest food conglomerates.
For decades, these companies bought up every brand they could find. Now, the system is bloated.
Enter the great unwinding. Recently, the packaged food sector went from an ossified, sleepy corner of the market to a hotbed of corporate drama. The spark was a rumoured $15.7 billion mega-merger between Unilever's legacy food division and McCormick.
It is the kind of deal that makes you sit up and pay attention.