Before Whole Foods Market offered to buy a smaller rival, its C-E-O didn't have much good to say about it.
In anonymous postings on Internet financial forums, John Mackey of Whole Foods wrote that management at Wild Oats Markets didn't know what it was doing, that the company's stock was overpriced and that the company had "no value and no future."
Then in February, Whole Foods announced it would buy Wild Oats for about 565 (m) million dollars.
The postings dating back to 1999 have been made public as part of a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission to block Whole Foods from buying Wild Oats on antitrust grounds.
Whole Foods says the postings are being taken out of context and that they represent Mackey's opinion, not those of the company.
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