McCain heiress turns up pressure for IPO with plans for family meeting — SkimNews
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- Eleanor McCain emailed approximately 55 second-, third- and fourth-generation McCain descendants inviting them to a virtual meeting Friday to review ownership paths for McCain Foods, which she pegged at more than $20-billion.
- In her letter, McCain said the company sits at an "existential cross roads" and that holding company MFGI's restrictions on share sales deny the liquidity rights founders promised their offspring.
- McCain holds an estimated $1-billion 8.7% stake in McCain Foods Group Inc. (MFGI) and sued MFGI in New Brunswick's Court of King's Bench in March after the board effectively blocked her attempt to sell to an outside investor at what she called a "discounted price."
- MFGI's board, led by Eleanor's cousin Andrew McCain, "pursues a singular focus on remaining private while overlooking the needs of an ever-growing shareholder base," her letter alleged.
- McCain hired Solomon Partners banker Scott Moses, an adviser to family-owned food companies on IPOs, to present "alternative paths" at Friday's anonymous-attendance meeting.
- McCain Foods is the world's largest frozen potato producer with $16-billion in annual sales and 22,000 employees across 160 countries — more than twice the size of NYSE-listed rival Lamb Weston Holdings, which has a US$6.1-billion market cap.
- In a 1995 court resolution of the founding brothers' feud, New Brunswick Justice Ronald Stevenson recommended McCain Foods "should seriously consider a public equity issue" to head off family disputes — advice the family has not acted on for three decades.
Why it matters: Friday's virtual meeting could crystallize enough family support to break three decades of resistance to going public — an IPO of McCain Foods would create a public float larger than rival Lamb Weston's US$6.1-billion market capitalization and give dozens of locked-in heirs a path to liquidity the MFGI board has so far refused.
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