Fresh Take: Smithfield IPO Initially Disappoints Amid Rollercoaster Week

What a week to be reporting from Washington, D.C.—between the inspector general of the Agriculture Department getting fired, the confirmation hearings of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and tariffs about to hit, it’s been quite a rollercoaster.

And the news keeps coming. Another thread that I’ve been following: the spinoff public listing of Smithfield, America’s largest pork processor. Virginia-based Smithfield was acquired in 2013 by the Chinese firm WH Group—founded and majority owned by the billionaire Wan Long—for $4.7 billion. At the time, it was the biggest takeover by a Chinese company in U.S. history. This latest IPO has initially disappointed, but Long, worth an estimated $1.4 billion, is set to reap the benefits in the long-term.

There’s a lot of change brewing. Count on Fresh Take to tell it to you straight.

— Chloe Sorvino, Staff Writer

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FIELD NOTES

After speaking about my book at the National Press Club in D.C. this week, I celebrated with a feast of shellfish at the classic haunt Old Ebbitt Grill. It was the seafood tower of my dreams!

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Chloe Sorvino leads coverage of food and agriculture as a staff writer on the enterprise team at Forbes. Her book, Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed and the Fight for the Future of Meat, published on December 6, 2022, with Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books. Her nearly nine years of reporting at Forbes has brought her to In-N-Out Burger’s secret test kitchen, drought-ridden farms in California’s Central Valley, burnt-out national forests logged by a timber billionaire, a century-old slaughterhouse in Omaha and even a chocolate croissant factory designed like a medieval castle in northern France.