China Buys Smitfield

"(Reuters) - China's Shuanghui International plans to buy Smithfield Foods Inc (SFD.N) for $4.7 billion to feed a growing Chinese appetite for U.S. pork, but the proposed takeover of the world's No. 1 producer has stirred concern in the United States.

The transaction, announced on Wednesday, would rank as the largest Chinese takeover of a U.S. company, with an enterprise value of $7.1 billion, including debt assumption.

As it stands. the deal is the biggest Chinese play for a U.S. company since CNOOC Ltd offered to buy Unocal for about $18 billion in 2005. The state-controlled energy company later withdrew that bid under U.S. political pressure."

The world just keeps on changing, doesn't it?  I remember when Smitfield was a fledgling little company gobbling up hog operations so quick you would have thought they would go broke before this would ever happen.

What do you think of a deal like this?  Most people I talk to don't like this at all and think big money and ownership is moving way too fast with our competitors.

I should have seen this coming years ago when I visited China and saw first hand their growing economy and understood their need and taste of protein.  A coop full of chickens or a hog strapped to a bicycle was common when I was there.

There is plenty of room for entrepreneurs to start a business like Smithfield did back in 1936.  I encouraged an email friend to look at expanding his meat business to a non GMO product and he is looking into it.  America's tastes are changing too, just like other parts of the world are learning what we did decades ago.

There is always opportunity if someone can figure out how to take it from paper and make it work.

It doesn't always take a 3-D printer to copy someone's product.

Ed