Michael Hiltzik: The Bumble Bee tuna price-fixing case could point to the future of white-collar prosecutions
When the roll call is sounded of business deals that looked like a good idea at the time but went massively wrong, special notice should go to the merger of the tuna packagers Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea, announced in late 2014.
The $1.5-billion deal would have created a canned tuna powerhouse commanding nearly half of the U.S. market, swamping StarKist, which at the time was the No.1 brand with 34.6 percent.
The deal never happened.
In conducting a routine antitrust review of the proposed deal, the Department of Justice unearthed what looked like a massive conspiracy among the three companies to fix canned tuna prices.
The parent of Chicken of the Sea, a Thai company named Thai Union Group, promptly bailed out of the merger and fessed up to the Justice Department in return for amnesty from prosecution.
