Dive Brief:
- Pilgrim's Pride Corp. has increased the price its willing to pay to buy Hillshire Farms to $55 a share, well above the $50 a share offer from rival Tyson Foods Inc.
- The new bid from Pilgrim's is some $1 billion higher than its original offer to acquire Hillshire, the maker of Ball Park Franks and Jimmy Dean sausages.
- Hillshire has yet to issue a public statement on the bids.
Dive Insight:
The merger and acquisition folks on Wall Street must be positively gleeful today now that the bidding war they had anticipated for Hillshire has emerged.
Pilgrim's, the second-largest poultry producer in the world, is owned by JBS, the largest meat processor on earth. Tyson is the largest poultry processor in America. Both companies have some pretty deep pockets. And both clearly have an appetite for Hillshire. We'll be surprised if the bids don't go higher.