Cargill divulging more information

The traditionally secretive Cargill “has begun to divulge more information than before,” noted

a recent

Financial Times

report.

In many senses, Cargill is one of the hidden companies of the global economy. As the world’s agribusiness leader, it sits at the nexus of one of the world’s biggest and most critical industries — a force of great importance to millions of farmers as well as to large food multinationals from Nestlé to Coca-Cola and Kraft, though it is much less well-known as a name. Its significance … is set to increase further as food demand rises in China, India and in parts of the developing world, and the use of biofuels grows in the west.

Cargill is the U.S.’s largest privately owned company. The FT report said it generated nearly $117 billion in revenues in 2009 and has 138,000 employees in 67 countries.

Founded in 1865 with a single Iowa grain elevator, the group remains controlled by about 80 members of the Cargill and MacMillan families, the low-profile descendants of founder William Cargill. It is their interests that Gregory Page, chief executive, is conscious he needs to protect.

The article noted that U.S. antitrust authorities are “looking into potentially anticompetitive market power among agricultural buyers and processors,” prompting Cargill’s recent openness.

Over history, Cargill has weathered many extremes in global agricultural markets. The son of the founder nearly bankrupted the company in the early 20th century after investing in a Montana irrigation project and an unsuccessful railroad. Cargill ran into huge difficulties during the south-east Asian financial crisis of 1997, when commodity demand plunged. It also lost money trading bonds amid Russia’s debt default of 1998…. In the year to last May, net profit fell 16 per cent to $3.33 billion. For the first nine months of fiscal 2010, which ends [in May], earnings totaled $1.91 billion, 37 per cent down on the same period of 2008-09.

Cargill’s non-family CEO, Gregory Page, told the

FT

that conversations between management and family members “dwell on whether results will bottom out below the company’s cost of capital, a question that turns on the pace of global growth.” (Source:

Financial Times,

May 19, 2010.)