Beatrice Foods

The Beatrice Foods Company was until the takeover by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. in 1987 and the subsequent destruction of the company one of the largest U.S. food companies. The company was founded in 1894 under the name Beatrice Creamery Company by George Everett Haskell and William W. Bosworth in Beatrice, Nebraska. The core business initially consisted of the purchase and sale of dairy products and eggs. In the following years the range and the beginning of the twentieth century advanced, the company was already active in the entire United States. 1913, therefore, the company moved to Chicago, then the center of the American food industry.

The company was renamed in 1946 in Beatrice Foods Company and expanded a short time later to Canada. One of the most famous in Germany marks the company was Avis Rent A Car. Revenues increased to 1984 to twelve billion dollars.

In the 1980s, the decline of the company began. To create made ​​Beatrice Foods mainly a lawsuit filed by residents of Woburn (Massachusetts ) and an unsuccessful advertising strategy. The plaintiffs sued the company in 1982 along with the WR Grace and Company because of a contamination of drinking water in the 1970s in Woburn on damages for pain and suffering. The plaintiffs were either ill or had even leukemia with leukemia lost relatives. Cause of the disease had apparently got into the drinking water chemicals. The lawsuits were later compared against payments out of court in the millions.

The scandal was the author Jonathan Harr as a template for the Roman Civil Procedure (Original Title: A Civil Action ) and was later filmed with John Travolta in the lead role.

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. took advantage of the weakness of the company in 1987 and took over this for the price of 8.7 billion dollars. The group was renamed the following year in TLC Beatrice International and sells division for division. Only Founded in 1969, an independent subsidiary company Beatrice Foods Canada Ltd.. remained was unaffected, as they acted independently since 1978 by the parent company and thus was not part of the acquisition. The latter was eventually taken over by the Italian group Parmalat 1997.