What managers of public companies are taught in business school, or learn quickly on the job, is that a publicly held company exists ONLY for the good and profit to it stock holders and its stockholders only.

Publicly held companies only consider the good of the customer or their employees if that furthers the goal and increases the profit to their shareholders.

This is why most CEO's of large public companies are finance/accounting/legal or occasionally sales people, but rarely engineers!

And shareholders are notoriously shortsighted, seeing only the next quarterly dividend check.

Realizing this makes life in and around large companies easier to understand.

And if you don't like this approach for some reason (such as you are not a shareholder in the large company) then your only real alternative is to do business with someone else in a different type of company. 

And of course the large publicly owned company will often do whatever it takes to discourage you/preventing you from doing this (dealing with a different sort of company) - as that is in the best interest of its shareholders.

Understanding this is the way business works makes life a bit easier to understand, for me at least.

Jim

Note in the original post the premium the buyer is willing to pay the shareholders of Smithfield over its current stock market value. 

The only thing that may discourage this type sale is government intervention.  And that is a dilemma. Do we want government intervention in this type of "deal" or is anything and everything in America for sale to the highest bidder?