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Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Cargill expects flour merger with ConAgra to be finalized in 6-8 weeks, (NYSE: CAG)

U.S. agribusiness Cargill Inc expects the merger of its flour mill operations with those of ConAgra Foods Inc to be finalized in six to eight weeks after it clears a longstanding regulatory hurdle, Cargill Executive Chairman Greg Page said on Tuesday.The combined entity, to be called Ardent Mills, would join ConAgra's milling operations with Horizon Milling LLC, which is a joint venture of privately held Cargill and U.S. farm cooperative CHS Inc. The deal was announced in March 2013 and was initially expected to be finalized late last year.But the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust division has been investigating the merger, which would result in Ardent Mills controlling about a third of U.S. flour mill capacity."We hope everything will be resolved in the next six to eight weeks," Page said, speaking on the sidelines of the Canadian Global Crops Symposium in Winnipeg. "It took longer than we would have hoped, and I'm sure that our employees would have hoped, but there's been continuous attention given to it by the Justice Department.

ConAgra Foods, Inc. is a packaged food company. The Company operates in four segments: Consumer Foods, Commercial Foods, Ralcorp Food Group, and Ralcorp Frozen Bakery Products. Shares of CAG traded higher by 0.16% or $0.05/share to $30.88. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $28.09 and as high as $37.28. On average, 3863130 shares of CAG exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 1173742.



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