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Whole Foods CEO regular poster on Yahoo! Finance message boards
As part of the FTC's lawsuit to block Whole Foods' acquisition of Wild Oats, some information has been released detailing how Whole Foods CEO John Mackey regularly posted on the Yahoo! Finance message boards for some eight years:
In January 2005, someone using the name "Rahodeb" went online to a Yahoo stock-market forum and posted this opinion: No company would want to buy Wild Oats Markets Inc., a natural-foods grocer, at its price then of about $8 a share.
"Would Whole Foods buy OATS?" Rahodeb asked, using Wild Oats' stock symbol. "Almost surely not at current prices. What would they gain? OATS locations are too small." Rahodeb speculated that Wild Oats eventually would be sold after sliding into bankruptcy or when its stock fell below $5. A month later, Rahodeb wrote that Wild Oats management "clearly doesn't know what it is doing. . . . OATS has no value and no future."
The comments were typical of banter on Internet message boards for stocks, but the writer's identity was anything but. Rahodeb was an online pseudonym of John Mackey, co-founder and chief executive of Whole Foods Market Inc. Earlier this year, his company agreed to buy Wild Oats for $565 million, or $18.50 a share.
Insiders should not be posting on Yahoo! message boards. Frankly, I'm a bit disappointed in Mackey for being so stupid. If you're interested in skimming posts either directed towards "rahodeb" or by "rahodeb", check out this google search.
My old CEO never posted on the company's Yahoo! message board (neither did anyone currently employed by the Company - at least not to my knowledge). However, he read (and still reads, I'm sure) those message boards with religious fervor. He even pegged a few bitter posters on the message board as ex-employees based on some of the comments they made. I always thought it was hilarious that random investors could so easily send a message to the CEO of a multi-billion dollar public company - particularly when the message involved calling the CEO incompetent/stupid/ugly/whatever.
Can't you just picture fat cat CEOs (literally fat in my old CEO's case) surfing the web getting incensed as flamers post about how badly they are doing their jobs? And these millionaires do it on company time, no less. Corporatism is such a joke.
We live in extremely connected times - we are not as anonymous as we may think. Mind your reputation.