For some reason a Wall Street Journal columnist, Collin Levy, has decided to defend Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ: WFMI) CEO John Mackey, who is under fire for pumping Whole Foods stock anonymously on Yahoo! message boards, sending emails to his company's board talking about acquiring Wild Oats as a way to eliminate competition, and just generally doing a pretty good impersonation of Patrick Byrne.
Talking about labor unions, he's said that "The union is like having herpes. It doesn't kill you, but it's unpleasant and inconvenient."
Mr. Levy would have us believe that the controversy swirling around Mackey, and the calls for his firing/resignation are payback for his union busting. But the fact is that Mackey, through sheer stupidity and arrogance, has gotten himself in trouble with the SEC, and may very well have given the FTC enough rope to stop the Wild Oats deal.
Combine that with the fact that stock is about 50% off its high, and you have to at least consider the idea that maybe it's time for new, more sane, management at Whole Foods.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-03-2007 @ 11:55AM
Pete said...
Is Whole Foods Market’s John Mackey up to his old tricks?
Early this morning, 6am French time, naturalchoices.co.uk and newconsumer.com both had potentially libellous comments posted on them by a poster identified as rohadeb, the same alias used by John Mackey on Yahoo Finance to denigrate his competitors and boost his own company.
See http://www.naturalchoices.co.uk/Is-Whole-Foods-Markets-John-Mackey?id_mot=7
8-03-2007 @ 2:24PM
GemmaStar said...
Pete, very likely the poster used the identification specifically to poke a finger in Mackey's eye. Remember: anyone can post. Anyone can say what he or she wants to say.
Was it silly for Mackey to post his comments? Yes. But that's all it was: Silly.
WFMI has spawned lots and lots of competition where I live. Now virtually every grocery store has aisles of organic food. My view? The government is becoming sillier than Mackey was.
8-06-2007 @ 3:03AM
Pete said...
My thoughts exactly, I checked with the UK immigration and the facts where in correct, there is no £2,000 fee, and also the fine is deportation of the worker unless an application is approved in double quick time.
WFMI has invested too much money in the UK to play silly fools.
In the UK organic and Fairtrade is already a strong part of the supermarkets 'luxurt and fine food' catgeory. Indeed something like 70% of all Fairtrade products are sold through supermarkets, that si one of the resaons I think that the WFMI entry into the UK may not be such a smooth path as its expansion in the US. The conventional supermarkets are no so much playing catch up as defending there existing dominance in this sector.