With Kellogg’s deal to acquire Procter & Gamble’s Pringles brand for $2.695 billion in cash, Diamond Foods is left with nothing. Proctor & Gamble’s announcement of the deal was accompanied by a terse statement that the consumer products company had terminated its prior agreement to sell Pringles to Diamond Foods.
It is a staggering reversal of fortune for Diamond and its now-suspended chief executive and chairman, Michael J. Mendes.
So it is time to see what we have learned from the twists and turns of this failed deal. Once again, some of these lessons seem rather basic, even cliché, but worth repeating. Frankly, deal makers tend to repeatedly ignore them.