No Power Shift At Pilgrim’s Pride

Pilgrim’s Pride Corp.is giving up a supervoting class of stock, but doing it in a way that keeps the Pilgrim family in firm voting control of the Pittsburg, Texas-based chicken producer. The company says that the reclassification was designed to improve shareholder value by generating more float and liquidity in trading on the NYSE. But the move was timed to temper the voting influence of a potentially powerful new shareholder, ConAgra Corp., which is getting some 32 million shares for selling its chicken division to Pilgrim’s Pride. Under the plan, the company is scrapping its Class B stock, which carries 20 votes a share. The dual-class structure is replaced by a single class of stock. But weighted voting will persist at least for some time to come. Each of the shares in the single class will wield 20 votes – until it is sold by the incumbent owner, when voting power will be reduced to one vote for the buyer. All shares issued to ConAgra will carry one vote each. Lonnie “Bo” Pilgrim, Chairman of Pilgrim’s Pride, and his son, Lonnie Ken Pilgrim, a director, collectively owned 63.7% of Class A stock and 62.2% of the Class B stock. With the new merged shares starting at 20 votes each, their power should remain dominant. Hercules Inc. directors scrapped their poison pill while these companies installed shareholder rights plans during August: ARI Corp., Bank of Marin, Helix BioMedix Inc., and MedSource Technologies Inc. Copyright 2003 Thomson Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.thomsonmedia.com