How did the corporation Chiquita get so big?

Question

How did the corporation Chiquita get so big?

Answer 1

Who is their major competition? nobody worth mention. they supply worldwide. their profits have enabled them to buy other agriculture companies as well, and they have become a produce powerhouse. I believe they are h.q.'ed in brasil ( i may be wrong), and if that is the case, they have the homefield advantage in the production of a great deal of the world's produce...bananas and all

Answer 2

selling a lot of bananas

Answer 3

Here's how:

Chiquita Brands International

Chiquita Brands International Inc. (NYSE: CQB) is a Cincinnati, Ohio-based producer and distributor of bananas and other produce, under a variety of subsidiary brand names, collectively known as Chiquita. Chiquita is the successor to the United Fruit Company and is the leading distributor of bananas in the United States. The company also owns a German produce distribution company, Atlanta AG, which it acquired in 2003. Chiquita was formerly controlled by Cincinnati billionaire Carl H. Lindner, Jr., his majority ownership of the company ended as a result of Chiquita Brands International exiting a prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 19, 2002.

Chiquita Banana

The trademark logo mascot, Chiquita Banana, was created by Dik Browne, who is best known for his Hägar the Horrible comic strip. 1940s vocalist Patti Clayton was the original 1944 voice of Chiquita Banana, followed by Elsa Miranda, June Valli and Monica Lewis.

History

Chiquita Brands International Inc. was formed in 1871 by U.S. railroad entrepreneur Henry Meiggs as the United Fruit Company. In 1970 it became the United Brands Company. And in 1985 it became Chiquita Brands International.

In 1975, an SEC invesitgation revealed that the company had bribed the Honduran President (dictator): Oswaldo López Arellano and Italian officials. The scandal was named Bananagate.

In the 1980s, the company (then known as United Brands Company) was involved in a leading Competition Law case when they were found to abuse their dominant position in the banana and fruit supply markets by the European Commission.

The Cincinnati Enquirer controversy



Chiquita Scandinavia, a former Chiquita Brands International ship. [1]On May 3, 1998, The Cincinnati Enquirer published an eighteen-page section, "Chiquita Secrets Revealed" on Chiquita. The articles, written by Enquirer investigative reporters Michael Gallagher and Cameron McWhirter, charged the company with mistreating the workers on its Central American plantations, polluting the environment, allowing cocaine to be brought to the United States on its ships, bribing foreign officials, evading foreign nations' laws on land ownership, forcibly preventing its workers from unionizing, and a host of other misdeeds.

Chiquita denied all the allegations, suing after it was revealed that Gallagher had repeatedly hacked into Chiquita's voice-mail system (no evidence ever indicated that McWhirter was aware of Gallagher's crime or a participant). A special prosecutor was appointed to investigate—the elected prosecutor having ties to Carl Lindner, Jr.. On June 28, 1998, the Enquirer retracted the entire series of stories, published a front-page apology, and paid the company a multi-million-dollar settlement. The Columbia Journalism Review would report both $14 million and $50 million for the amount.[citation needed] Chiquita's Annual Report mentions 'a cash settlement in excess of $10 million'. One of the reporters, Gallagher, would be fired and prosecuted and the paper's editor, Lawrence K. Beaupre, would be transferred to the Gannett's headquarters amid allegations that he ignored the paper's usual procedures on fact-checking in order to win a Pulitzer Prize. Chiquita has not formally challenged any of the factual claims raised in the original articles.

Protection payments to paramilitary groups.

On March 14, 2007, Chiquita Brands was fined $25 million as part of a settlement with the United States Justice Department for having ties to Colombian paramilitary groups. According to court documents, between 1997 and 2004, officers of a Chiquita subsidiary paid approximately $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, the AUC, in exchange for local, employee protection in Colombia's volatile banana harvesting zone. Similar payments were also made to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as well as the National Liberation Army (ELN) from 1989 to 1997.[1][2] All three of these groups are on the U.S. State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

On March 19, 2007, Chiquita Brands admitted in federal court that the subsidiary company (which was subsequently sold) paid Colombian terrorists to protect employees at its most profitable banana-growing operation. As part of a deal with prosecutors, the company pleaded guilty to one count of doing business with a terrorist organization. In exchange, the company will pay a $25-million fine and court documents will not reveal the identities of the group of senior executives who approved the illegal protection payments.

Chiquita currently faces serious charges in a lawsuit issued in June 2007. According to the attorney of 173 family members of victims of the AUC militia this could be the biggest terrorist case in history and may put Chiquita out of business. "Terry Collingsworth, a lawyer with International Rights Advocates who is leading the multi-million dollar litigation, said: "This is a landmark case, maybe the biggest terrorism case in history. In terms of casualties, it's the size of three World Trade Center attacks."

Ongoing workers' rights violations

In May 2007, the French NGO "Peuples Solidaires" publicly accused the Compañia Bananera Atlántica Limitada (COBAL), a Chiquita subsidiary, of knowingly violating its workers' basic rights and endangering their families health and their own. Allegedly, the banana firm has carelessly exposed laborers at the Coyol plantation in Costa Rica to highly toxic pesticides on multiple occasions. Additionally, the human rights group accuses the company of using a private militia to intimidate workers. Finally, Peuples Solidaires claims that Chiquita, despite a regional agreement between the company and local unions requiring prompt investigation of grievances, has ignored certain union complaints for more than a year.

Basically they were and are aggressive, profit and power-oriented, opportunistic, lucky - and all these things aren't bad IN AND OF THEMSELVES, but it looks like a typical big-company history profile, where you see behavior always pushing the envelope - or various envelopes - one of them being politics, international human and labor issues -stuff like that - you know, always in their favor, like Microsoft pushing Netscape Navigator out of business by packaging their browser into their windows operating systems and not revealing code to anyone else. This would be OK, but because Microsoft is a monopoly in operating systems - 90% market share - it is unfair and illegal - both.

Now Microsoft is trying to muscle their way into Yahoo. I, personally hope they don't make it.

Competition, and a lot of it, really does protect the public. Monopolies lead to corruption. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887

So, ... what's our motto for the say? "Eata Chiquita and sponsor a terrorist!" ??

You know, I don't know. This information was out there. It may or may not be true, but my experience tells me it probably is.