Sara Lee Disarray Costs Shareholders About $1 Billion: Real M&A

Sara Lee Corp.’s managers, who failed to boost the stock price buying and selling $12 billion in assets in the past decade, destroyed shareholder value by passing up three chances to sell the company in the last year.

The board of the 72-year-old maker of Ball Park hot dogs and Hillshire Farm lunch meat, led by then-Chairman James Crown, rejected approaches from JBS SA, KKR & Co. and an Apollo Global Management LLC group that valued Sara Lee at as much as $18.50 a share, based on accounts from people with knowledge of the negotiations who declined to be identified because the discussions were private. The board asked for higher offers only to turn them down later, the people said.