Flash in the Pan

I was actually taken aback when I heard that for years Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey used to go into finance chat rooms anonymously to act as a cheerleader and to attack rival Wild Oats, which he now wants his company to acquire. The Federal Trade Commission filed suit this week to block the merger. As Bloomberg reports:

Mackey, 53, made the postings "under an alias to avoid having his comments associated with the company and to avoid others placing too much emphasis on his remarks," Whole Foods said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.

Oh, please, who is the Whole Foods PR machine trying to kid? He posted it anonymously to keep himself off the hook of criticism and of potential charges that he was trying to game the stock prices. But then, as I learned first hand, the Whole Foods PR department isn't above trying to say things like manmade synthetic versions of chemicals fed to salmon to color them aren't artificial dyes. In fact, I received an anonymous comment from someone trying to take the "It really is all natural" which makes me wonder if Mr. Mackey's comments went farther and wider than the Yahoo chat rooms.

Fortune is asking if he's too much of a loose canon to have as CEO of a pubicly-held company. As a consumer I'm wondering just how much more I'm going to be paying as a result.

Mackey is trying to put a good face on the whole FTC challenge, going on at length about it on his corporate blog, but then ended up posting the internal memo that the FTC is supposedly using as part of its case. What were reasons one and two for the move?:

Elimination of an acquisition opportunity for a conventional supermarket — our targeted company is the only existing company that has the brand and number of stores to be a meaningful springboard for another player to get into this space. Eliminating them means eliminating this threat forever, or almost forever.

Elimination of a competitor — they compete with us for sites, customers and Team Members.

He then went on to try and explain the memo. Interestingly, the memo was all about what it would do for the company - and that's fair enough, because, after all, it's a business move. But then as Mackey is trying explain why its so reasonable (twisting logic in some places, like trying to say that if the FTC objected to this merger, they should have objected to all acquisitions the company had done), he forgets that customers really don't care about getting the best business environment for Whole Foods. They want better choices and better food for themselves. Here's Mackey's argument:

Since the FTC never actually compared prices between Wild Oats and Whole Foods, how can they in good conscience claim that this merger will mean higher prices for consumers? They didn't conduct adequate research prior to making this claim! In fact, the exact opposite is true. Why? Because after the merger is complete, the acquired Wild Oats stores will be brought into Whole Foods system and their overall prices will be lowered. Consumers will be receiving lower prices, not higher prices after this merger is completed.

Oh, someone get me some aspirin. The biggest "natural food" chain buys the second biggest and, of course, prices won't go higher? Wait, wait - maybe I can go buy a bridge at the local Whole Foods. Let me get my piles of small unmarked bills first.

Labels: Mackey, posting, Whole Foods