International Law

Who Owns that Brand, Anyway?

By Stan

Dongwon Group of South Korea announced that it will buy a controlling stake in StarKist from Del Monte Food for more than $300 million.

StarKist is a very well-known brand of canned tuna in the U.S. (not sure if they have other products). This is not the first time a foreign company has picked up a U.S. brand, but I think that the number of these kinds of deals will pick up markedly in the next couple of years for a variety of reasons, including exchange rates, relatively speeds of economic growth, surplus petro-dollars and sovereign wealth funds, and the lure of leapfrogging the competition into a Western market by way of good branding.

Should be fun to watch. If this topic tickles your fancy, David Wolf has written some good stuff on the subject. The really fun part will be when certain "beloved" U.S. brands get picked up by Chinese multinationals. Then we’ll see the old nationalist spirit rear its ugly head once again.

Full post as published by China Hearsay on June 27, 2008 (boomark / email).