Dive Brief:
- Tyson Foods has offered to buy Hillshire Brands in an all-cash, $50 a share deal. Total valuations for such a purchase vary -- the Wall Street Journal calls it a $6.1 billion offer; the New York Times and Bloomberg put it at $6.8 billion; Reuters puts it at $6.3 billion.
- Whatever the final calculation turns out to be, the offer is well above the $45 a share offer that Pilgrim made to Hillshire earlier this week.
- Shares in Hillshire soared nearly 18% yesterday, passing the $52 mark -- an indication that Wall Street expects a bidding war for the maker of Jimmy Dean sausages.
Dive Insight:
This could get nasty. JBS, the owner of Pilgrim, is the world's largest meat processor. Tyson is the nation's biggest chicken processor. Pilgrim is the second largest. Neither Tyson nor JBS is likely to surrender without a fight.
In fact, things are already getting nasty. Bloomberg reports that JBS has fired Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter of an upcoming bond sale because the investment bank helped Tyson form a bid for Pilgrim.