As a grocery chain is dismantled, investors recover their money. Worker pensions are short millions.

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

As a grocery chain is dismantled, investors recover their money. Worker pensions are short millions.

By Peter Whoriskey December 28 at 6:37 PM

MUNCIE, Ind. — Once the Marsh Supermarkets chain began to falter a few years ago, its owner, a private-equity firm, began selling off the vast retail empire, piece by piece. The company sold more than 100 convenience stores. It sold the pharmacies. It closed some of the 115 grocery stores, having previously auctioned off their real estate. Then, in May 2017, the company announced the closure of the remaining 44 stores.

Marsh Supermarkets, founded in 1931, had at last filed for bankruptcy.

“It was a long, slow decline,” said Amy Gerken, formerly an assistant office manager at one of the stores. Sun Capital Partners, the private-equity firm that owned Marsh, “didn’t really know how grocery stores work. We’d joke about them being on a yacht without even knowing what a UPC code is. But they didn’t treat employees right, and since the bankruptcy, everyone is out for their blood.”

The anger arises because although the sell-off allowed Sun Capital and its investors to recover their money and then some, the company entered bankruptcy leaving unpaid more than $80 million in debts to workers’ severance and pensions.

For Sun Capital, this process of buying companies, seeking profits and leaving pensions unpaid is a familiar one. Over the past 10 years, it has taken five companies into bankruptcy while leaving behind debts of about $280 million owed to employee pensions.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/as-a-grocery-chain-is-dismantled-investors-recover-their-money-worker-pensions-are-short-millions/2018/12/28/ea22e398-0a0e-11e9-85b6-41c0fe0c5b8f_story.html

[not fooled]

1. Gov't sanctioned predatory capitalism

at its worst.

[JayhawkSD]

3. Indeed, and yet...

We keep reelecting the legislators who sanction it.

[not fooled]

4. Yes

Much of the reason this kind of pillaging goes on largely unchecked is because the media hides the facts. One of the many deleterious outcomes of having a few large multinationals control almost all information the American people receive.

[JayhawkSD]

7. Undoubtedly true, but... Always but...

The truth is available for those who take the time and effort to find it. The media misleads only those who are so lazy that they follow only the media. The public knows it is being lied to, legislators and office holders no longer even try to make their lies believable ("We are denying them space in which to plan their attacks."), but is content to swallow the lies.

[secondwind]

2. Vulture capitalism-- a Romney specialty.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

5. Indeed

Why build anything when there's so much to be plundered?

[AwakeAtLast]

6. Marsh was my favorite grocery store

But you could tell when the decline started. They employed actual meatcutters!