Dive Brief:

• Dole Food shareholders approved a privatization offer from the company's chief executive officer, the 90-year old David Murdock.
• There's a sense of deja vu involving the deal. Murdock has brought Dole Foods in and out of the public markets multiple times, netting billions for himself and a small group of executives and advisers. This is the second privatization of Dole in less than 10 years.
• Shareholders gave the OK to the $1.2 billion deal by a slim margin. And some hedge funds who held shares are upset by the pricing of the deal and will seek relief from a judge.

Dive Insight:

Dole is the largest shipper of fruits and vegetables on earth. Murdock made that happen. He deserves praise and he deserves the money he has earned. (Murdock has become a very wealthy man since taking over Dole's former parent company in 1995.) But we tend to side with the hedge funds on this one. In the days before announcing the privatization plan, Murdock took a number of steps that depressed Dole's share price -- announcing large capital expenditures and cancelling a planned stock buyback. Investors sued over those moves too. And a ruling is expected soon. This deal smells as bad as a container ship full of rotting fruit. As we said last month, the Dole deal is an example of why it's so easy to become cynical about American business.