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The Sara Lee Corporation (former NYSE ticker symbol: SLE) was an American consumer-goods company based in Downers Grove, Illinois.〔"(Investor Contacts )." Sara Lee Corporation. Retrieved on January 31, 2011. "Sara Lee Corporation Investor Relations Department 3500 Lacey Road Downers Grove, Illinois 60515-5424 ."〕〔"(About Sara Lee )." Sara Lee Corporation. Retrieved on January 31, 2011. "Based in Downers Grove, Ill.,()"〕 It had operations in more than 40 countries and sold its products in over 180 nations worldwide. Its international operations were headquartered in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Sara Lee is also the brand name of a number of frozen and packaged foods, often known for the long-running slogan "Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody doesn't like Sara Lee," often incorrectly reported as "Nobody does it like Sara Lee." While the company traced its lineage to 1939, when Nathan Cummings acquired C. D. Kenny Company, a wholesale distributor of sugar, coffee, and tea in Baltimore, the Sara Lee Corporation was actually the descendant of a Chicago grocery store called Sprague, Warner & Company. This enterprise, which started on State Street in Chicago, was founded during the Civil War by Albert A. Sprague and Ezra J. Warner. By 1909, Sprague, Warner & Company was one of the leading wholesale grocery companies in the United States, famous for house brands such as Richelieu, Ferndell, and Batavia. In 1942, this company was acquired by the Canadian-born Cummings. The new Chicago-based company, at first called Sprague Warner–Kenny Corp., ranked as the largest grocery wholesaler in the United States. Annual sales grew from about $20 million in 1942 to $120 million by 1946. After changing its name in 1945 to Consolidated Grocers, Cummings’s company became the Consolidated Foods Corporation in 1953.〔"(Consolidated Foods Corp )." Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago. Retrieved on May 1, 2014.〕 In 1956, the company bought a company known as Kitchens of Sara Lee, which became one of the company's best-known brand names. Management adopted the brand name as the name of the corporation as a whole in 1985. As of 2005, Sara Lee Corporation had operations in more than 40 countries; sold food, beverage, and household products in over 180 countries; and had some 137,000 employees worldwide. On July 4, 2012, Sara Lee Corporation was split into two companies—one for North American operations which would be renamed Hillshire Brands (the Sara Lee name would continue to be used on bakery and certain deli products distributed by Hillshire Brands), the other for international beverage and bakery businesses named D.E Master Blenders 1753.〔 ==History== Prior to 1985, The Sara Lee Corporation was called Consolidated Foods, of which Sara Lee was the best known brand. Consolidated Foods had bought a Chicago bakery chain called Kitchens of Sara Lee in 1956 from Charles Lubin. Lubin had named his bakeries after his daughter, Sara Lee. She was born in 1941, and now goes by her married name, Sara Lee Schupf. In 1986, Sara Lee bought the manufacturing and mail order operations of Wolferman's, a maker of English muffins, that dated back to 1888. On June 25, 2001, Sara Lee Corp pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and agreed to pay $4.4 million for selling tainted meat that was blamed for at least 15 deaths and six miscarriages in 1998; the agreement stressed that Sara Lee's Bil Mar Foods division did not knowingly distribute the tainted meat. On August 7, 2001, Sara Lee Corp cleared the last remaining regulatory hurdle in its purchase of Earthgrains Co, receiving approval from the European Commission (S). Brenda C. Barnes joined Sara Lee Corporation in July 2004 as the President and Chief Operating Officer. Then in February 2005, Barnes was named President and Chief Executive Officer, and the corporation announced it would move its headquarters from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Downers Grove, Illinois, which housed the company’s North American operating businesses and the majority of Sara Lee’s corporate staff. Also in February 2005, the company began executing a multi-year plan to transform Sara Lee into a company focused on its food, beverage, and household and body care businesses around the world. To support that focus, Sara Lee announced plans to dispose of approximately 40 percent of the company’s revenues, including its apparel, European packaged meats, US retail coffee and direct selling businesses. On December 22, 2005, Sara Lee Corporation was to delist from Euronext Amsterdam and Euronext Paris stock exchanges, as well as the Swiss Exchange. The company said it was taking the voluntary step due to low trading volumes on those exchanges. 2005 also saw the debut of Sara Lee Soft & Smooth Made with Whole Grain White Bread. In October, Barnes succeeded C. Steven McMillan as chairman. The year ended with the sale of the direct selling business to Tupperware. In 2006, Sara Lee announced a new company wide campaign: "the joy of eating." The campaign was part of a restructuring at Sara Lee. 2006 featured the divestiture of Sara Lee's European meats and European branded apparel businesses. In addition, the corporation spun off to its shareholders the Branded Apparel, Americas/Asia, business, into a separate, publicly traded company called HanesBrands Inc. Including the spin-off, Sara Lee raised more than $3.7 billion in proceeds as part of the company’s transformation plan. In addition to the monetary benefits, the company is now tightly focused on its core businesses—food, beverage, and household and body care. In 2008, Sara Lee sold off its Direct Store Delivery foodservice coffee business to Farmer Brothers for a reported $45 million. By 2009, Sara Lee was pursuing the sale of its Household and Body Care business in their continuing effort to focus on core business. In April, Sara Lee launched a state-of-the-art research and development center named The Kitchens of Sara Lee, a campus at the company’s headquarters in Downers Grove, Ill. On September 25, 2009, Sara Lee announced it accepted a binding offer by Unilever for €1.275 billion to sell its global body care and European detergents business. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and consultation with European employee works councils. On November 9, 2010, Sara Lee said that by selling its North American Fresh Bakery unit to Grupo Bimbo, it could grow in other areas. The $959 million deal gives Sara Lee the right to continue using the Sara Lee name on frozen desserts and meat products. Grupo Bimbo will use the Sara Lee name for fresh-baked products around the world except for Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The deal also means Grupo Bimbo gets 41 plants and the regional brands Grandma Sycamore's, Heiner's and Rainbo. On January 28, 2011, Sara Lee announced the company would be split into two units. The company said its North American operations (including Jimmy Dean, Ball Park and Hillshire Farm) would take the Hillshire Brands corporate name, while the international beverage and bakery businesses (including Douwe Egberts, Senseo, Pickwick, Maison du Café, L'OR, Café Pilão, and Marcilla) would constitute a separate unit named D.E Master Blenders 1753. Some analysts claimed splitting the business into two units would make a takeover more likely. Stockholders would have equal shares in both companies. In the same month, Sara Lee received noted media attention regarding their strategy to "refocus on the core" to revamp the company. In a Forbes magazine column, Adam Hartung stated Sara Lee couldn’t "cost-cut, refocus or re-align a business to success with no new products and no growth plan." Also, Marcel Smits, interim CEO since Barnes left due to a stroke, became the new CEO, and Jan Bennink director and chairman. The split was completed on July 4, 2012. The successor company, Hillshire Brands, re-located its headquarters from Downers Grove to Chicago in 2012. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sara Lee Corporation」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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