Fact about Stange Company & McCormick

[swamprocker]

I was checking out McCormick history and found out "In 1981 Industrial-strength Flavor: McCormick acquires Stange Company of Chicago, a maker of flavorings for industrial customers."

[Ken_Griffiths]

John,

McCormick and Stange Co. we're friends and had done business together for a while. There were two unfriendly approaches made to each company in 1980.

The first was an 'unfriendly' attempt to takeover McCormick's by Sandoz Ltd; a Swiss drugs company. The board fought off their bid(s).

Shortly afterwards Stange was also subject to a potential buyout by Iroquois Brands Ltd, who were buying a large amount of stock in the company. It was an unwelcome suitor. McCormicks board stepped in and purchased the Stange shares from Iroquois Brands ltd .. obviously buying the stock at a much higher price, but it forced Iroquois Brands out of the merger.

McCormick ended up with the deal becoming a merger, rather than a takeover and McCormicks made Stange a company subsidiary, leaving them to continue operating in Chicago under the same management team. The Stange management team still held onto a controlling share at that time.

The merger was done to prevent the unfriendly approaches from other companies. As they say... "That's what friends are for."

I found out that Iroquois Brands Ltd. paid $8.25 per share for Stange initially, but sold them to McCormicks at $13.25 making themselves a nice profit. In the course of the acquisition though Stange did try to prevent the attempted merger by suing Iroquois until McCormicks came to their rescue.

Ken

[Ken_Griffiths]

McCormick themselves have since grown throughout the world via acquisitions and mergers, Thirteen in total since 2007 (as an example), the last being Enrico Giotto, an Italian (Florence) based company that produces natural flavours and herbal extracts.

McCormick also tried (three times) to buyout Premier Foods Ltd here in the U.K. in 2016 offering 65p per share initially, but the company rejected the offers made. McCormicks walked away from the deal eventually in April and the Premier Foods share price plummeted. It's currently trading at 40.94p. So I think the management at Premier Foods UK should have accepted the takeover bid. I bet their shareholders were/are not too pleased at losing out on the offer.

McCormicks already has strong ties to the UK with their Schwartz brand, a market leader here for herbs and spices. In fact they have a strong foothold in many countries around the world, so it's clear they are expanding and diversifying their business and 'back-filling' in many countries, making ever-more profit for their shareholders.

These worldwide companies become almost too big to fail ... (famous last words)! I guess they have to grow, to reduce the risk of hostile takeovers.

[ThePieMan]

Interesting discussion. It brought back a persistent irritation I've had regarding some of our research. That is the source of CHS's Seasonings. I believe its been well put here and elsewhere that Sexton, and Stange were the preferred and exclusive suppliers for Kentucky Fried Chicken Seasoning. I do not wish to reopen old debates but to ask some questions, for clarifications.

Q1: Were these companies, both Sexton, and Stange, publicly traded companies in CHS's time? If so, did they produce Annual Reports that were publicly available? If so, where are these reports now?

Q2: We know that preferred sources of Marion Kay Seasonings, but what were the preferred sources of Sextons Seasonings? Also for Stange? What was their full range of commercial spice offerings?

The annual reports, if available should give an indication of the growth and development of these Spice companies as a direct result of their involvement with CHS. The range and source should indicate the cultivars we should be concerned with. Whilst I'm all in favour of looking at exotics and other sub-genus strains of common herbs, I believe that our best efforts lie in trying to get back to was was readily available at the time. The Note, the flavour, should be accessible through what was common back in the day. personal preference will dictate what sub-species of marjoram, thyme, sage, etc we choose to use for our own take on it all.

jm2cw.

TT

[Ken_Griffiths]

TT,

I can't truly speak for American or Canadian based companies, but in the U.K. all registered company records and a copy of accounts etc. are held in London at Companies House and no doubt in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s were stored on paper. Some but not all records were later archived onto microfiche, to obviously reduce storage costs etc, but I don't think the records were ever digitised in a 'back-record-conversion' process. Presumably more recent records are indexed and are digitally stored.

There is obviously a cost to accessing such records (depending on how and where they are held) and there is undoubtedly an 'archive and destruction' policy. I have no information as to time-limits for their destruction. I can say however for tax purposes, accounting records do need to be kept by both companies and individuals for a period of 6 years.

So my guess is there will be similar policies and procedures in the US, which, if that is the case, finding such business records for either Sexton or Stange way back in 1940’s/1950’s may prove difficult. I very much doubt they would have digitised the 'old' records in any kind of back-record conversion, or be directly accessible, via some online source... but I'm just guessing when I say that.

I don't know where to even begin to look for such records unless the U.S. or it's seperate States, have some central accessible point similar to Companies House, but if anyone has any ideas, then I may be willing to dig a little deeper into this matter, to at least ascertain the likely availability and cost of obtaining such records. My initial thoughts however, are that such records may have been destroyed long, long ago... or remain filed in some huge warehouse, unindexed and probably inaccessible, by me at least.

So if any member, or guest passing by the forum, can throw any more light on this matter, as to where to find company records, or accounts, for Stange or Sexton's, dating back 75 years, or so, then please get in touch with me, if necessary, via email at [e-mail].

To be honest TT, I'm not really hopeful of finding the answer to this, or to put it another way, I won't hold my breath for a response.

I guess if you don't ask, you don't get ...and we should 'never say never'.

Ken

[Ken_Griffiths]

In fact I found this brief record for a U.K. Car company at Companies House and it infers the records go back 30 years for businesses. This is a 'new and used’ car-sales franchise company that started in 1937, but the records are only available as far back as 1986, every year after that the records, (albeit not all are shown in my screen capture), are accessible...


Click to enlarge image.

[ThePieMan]

Nice one Ken,

and good commentary. Yes even for my little company, Financial Records and Minutes need to be kept for a period of seven years, with a traceable audit able to link clearly to earlier periods back to initiation. So as you say, there is not much hope of accessing Annual Reports for these companies, but its worth a try. I thought that perhaps the Library of Congress in the US might hold a single copy of such Annual Report documents. Not being American or having ever been there I couldn't definitively say.

The next best thing would be detailed Spice Trade Industry Reports detailing the market activity of each individual herb or spice traded both internationally and domestically. Be that as it may, I still think our best option is to dig up a landfill (Modern/Contemporary Archeology) and see if there are any remnant Kentucky Fried Chicken Spice Bags to discover...

jm2cw.

...or maybe the Garbologists have already found some of them?

[ThePieMan]

An old pack of KFC Spice mix from some Garbologists collection combined with this device (herb and spice analyser) would be good. Anyone got one?

[Deleted]

The oldest I have is from 1998, but I've found little interest exists for studying it.