John Mackey Channels Patrick Byrne

From DealBook:

John P. Mackey, the co-founder of Whole Foods Market, has never lacked for personality. As it turns out, that was only the half of it. For seven years, Mr. Mackey had an online alter ego.
Using the pseudonym Rahodeb — a variation of Deborah, his wife’s name — Mr. Mackey typed out more than 1,100 entries on Yahoo Finance’s bulletin board over a seven-year period, championing his company’s stock and occasionally blasting a rival, Wild Oats Markets, that his company later went on to buy. The story was first disclosed on The Wall Street Journal’s Web site last night.
Responding to a posting on March 28, 2006, Rahodeb wrote: “OATS has lost their way and no longer has a sense of mission or even a well-thought-out theory of the business. They lack a viable business model that they can replicate. They are floundering around hoping to find a viable strategy that may stop their erosion. Problem is that they lack the time and the capital now.”
Mr. Mackey apparently did not fool participants on the forum, who occasionally tried to out Rahodeb. In one instance, he responded by saying that he was in fact George W. Bush.
The attacks were made on Yahoo! financial forums, under the name “Rahodeb,” and included such postings as “Would Whole Foods buy OATS? Almost surely not at current prices…What would they gain? OATS locations are too small.” Rahodeb also said Wild Oats’ management “clearly doesn’t know what it is doing.” The company, he wrote, “has no value and no future.”
In February, Whole Foods announced it would buy Wild Oats for about $565 million, or $18.50 per share.
Mr. Mackey declined an interview request from The Wall Street Journal but did post on the company Website saying that the F.T.C. was quoting Rahodeb “to embarrass both me and Whole Foods.” He also said: “I posted on Yahoo! under a pseudonym because I had fun doing it. Many people post on bulletin boards using pseudonyms…I never intended any of those postings to be identified with me.”
Mr. Mackey’s post continued: “The views articulated by rahodeb sometimes represent what I actually believed and sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes I simply played ‘devil’s advocate’ for the sheer fun of arguing. Anyone who knows me realizes that I frequently do this in person, too.”

Posted by on July 12th, 2007 at 11:14 am


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