What's the big deal? Actually, there were no big deals as a sluggish economy was reflected in a dearth of M&A activity among food processors. (Top 150)

Refrigerated & Frozen Foods, February, 2003 by Jack Neff

No big deal" could sum up what went on in refrigerated and frozen foods in 2002. After a year when big deals reshaped much of the leadership in the Refrigerated and Frozen Foods Top 150, 2002 was a bit anti-climactic. It was a year when some of the big got a little bigger, some of the big got a little smaller, and some of the small got purchased by financial buyers.

Sluggish merger and acquisition activity in food mirrored the broader economy, according to the Food Institute Report, which, through the third quarter of 2002 tracked only 274 transactions industrywide, down 28 percent from the year-ago period.

The industry's big players mainly consolidated gains from the prior year, in some cases by selling off chunks of what they acquired the year before. The...