Friday, November 16, 2012

Twinkies

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Another company filing bankruptcy due to unreasonable Union demands.

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10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stop just reposting anything you think may be "conservative", or anti democratic.
Hostess has been having financial problems for years. They can't get it together so they're blaming the unions for their downfall. Poor management did them in, not unions.

Lynn Anderson said...

I will continue to post what I choose. You don't like it? Too damn bad. This company has been trying to survive. The unions made it impossible. That is a fact. It is lucky that any company today can make it. Under Obama, it will be even more difficult.

A Thoughtful Member of the 1% said...

Oooooh, those bad unions that owned a HUGE pile of equity in Hostess Brands, helped stave off previous bankruptcy to save their jobs, but were screwed anyway.

It came down to two hedge funds that took control after Hostess's last financial deal. Silver Point and Monarch holdings could have kept Hostess out of liquidation and kept the Twinkie bakery ovens firing. But they were unable to reach a deal without more large union concessions — what some would call total union capitulation — so the hedge funds decided Hostess would have to die.

This is not the first time Hostess Brands has entered bankruptcy. Weighed down by a balance sheet heavy with debt, pension obligations and declining sales, the company sought bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in 2004.

After nearly five years in bankruptcy, Hostess emerged in 2009 under the control of a private equity firm called Ripplewood Holdings, which invested $130 million of new capital in the company. The keys to coming out of the bankruptcy the first time around were concessions by the two groups most responsible for Hostess falling back into bankruptcy just 3 years late: the unions and lenders that OWNED SECURED COMPANY DEBT nominally worth around $450 million.

In the deal that allowed Hostess to come out of bankruptcy, the unions AGREED to concessions that would save the company around $110 million a year in labor costs. The lenders, led by the hedge funds Silver Point and Monarch, agreed to provide a new secured loan of $360 million, forgive half the existing debt, and exchange the rest of that debt for a payment-in-kind loan.
Read the Fortune Magazine piece by David Kaplan for some clarity. It's yet another case of third-party financing doing the dirty... not workers being unreasonable. Rightly, the unions felt they had been squeezed as far as they could be. Take a guess at who profits.

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/26/hostess-twinkies-bankrupt/

Lynn Anderson said...

Look, you socialists won't be happy until you bring down the entire economy. What will you do then with NO job and NO one to tax?

MANNYR said...

The union that defeated the evil corporation (Hostess) can now celebrate in the unemployment line. Corporations are created for "profit," not to provide ever increasing entitlements for its employees.

Sammy said...

18,500 people now won't have jobs. You're happy with that 1 percenter?

Anonymous said...

Well ,Obama must be thrilled that another company bit the dust. Now he has 18,000 more families to take care of with our tax dollars!What will happen when there is no more other peoples money? When will ObamaClaus start taking responsibility for his failed policies?Are the 18,000 out of work families happy that they protested themselves out of a job? They probably don't care. ObamaClaus will save the day. With other peoples money.

A Thoughtful Member of the 1% said...

Please. Hostess Brands' was saved from bakruptcy TWICE with assistance from it's union employees. The hedge fund masters controlling it could care less about those 18,000 jobs. Do you all prefer supporting vulture capitalists over workers?

The REAL story is about poor financial managment, not union demands. Read it.

Anonymous said...

READ IT--

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-16/hostess-liquidation-curious-cast-characters-twinkie-tumbles

Anonymous said...

The unions didn't give concessions this time. Now they are all without jobs. Serves them right. Their time has passed.