"Fed Working Paper: "Are Millennials Different?" (and why 'news for millenials' plays never panned out)":
Yes they are different.
They apparently don't have can openers.
More after the jump....
From the Los Angeles Times:
Speaking as a lifelong aficionado of the tuna fish sandwich on rye, I was relieved to learn that Bumble Bee’s Nov. 21 bankruptcy filing wouldn’t mean the eradication of the brand from store shelves — it would merely come under new ownership.
Yet there’s much more to it than that. The bankruptcy filing is an outgrowth of a price-fixing case that makes tuna processing seem a lot wilder and more colorful on dry land than it is at sea.
In fact, judging from the federal allegations, the guilty pleas filed by all three major tuna processing companies and several of their executives, and other documents, a lot went on in this industry that wouldn’t be out of place in a Martin Scorsese movie.
Rather than focus on innovation and growth, the three major brands
have fought an ‘unwinnable’ war to steal shares from one another.
have fought an ‘unwinnable’ war to steal shares from one another.
Tuna executive Christopher Lischewski warns against price competition in canned tuna in 1999
There are secret meetings to plot criminal strategies, participants turning state’s evidence to cut a better plea deal than their co-conspirators, even the allegation of a sotto voce threat delivered with a brotherly hand on the shoulder of a would-be witness.
The three brands involved are household names: Bumble Bee, StarKist and Chicken of the Sea. The first two have pleaded guilty to criminal price-fixing, agreeing to fines of $25 million and $100 million, respectively. Chicken of the Sea has been awarded amnesty for blowing the whistle on the two others. (Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea are based in San Diego, StarKist in Pittsburgh.)
Bumble Bee was assessed the lower fine because it successfully pleaded to prosecutors that any higher figure would put it out of business.Bumble Bee did indeed file their bankruptcy petition and said they planned to sell the assets to Taiwan's FCF Co. for $925 mil.
As I’ve reported previously, the government’s price-fixing case began with routine antitrust scrutiny of a proposed $1.5-billion merger between Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea. The merger, announced in 2014, would have created a canned tuna giant commanding nearly half of the U.S. market, swamping StarKist, which at the time was the No.1 brand with 34.6%....MUCH MORE
