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Whole Foods Corporate Governance

In: Business and Management

Submitted By linalina
Words 1899
Pages 8
Whole Foods Market

[ACTG 4760 Case Project 1]

[Xiaofei Liao]

History of Corporate Governance at the Firm

Whole Foods Market was founded in Austin, Texas. 1980, with merely 19 people. There are four founders of the company, John Mackey, Rene Lawson Hardy, Craig Weller and Mark Skiles. John and Renee dropout from college and borrowed a total of $45,000 from their families and friends to open Saferway Natural Foods. Two years later, the couple partnered with Craig and Mark, owners of Clarksville Natural Grocery, to merge Saferway with their Clarksville. This action resulted the opening of the original Whole Foods Market in 1980. Whole Foods goes public in January 1992, trading shares on the NASDAQ Stock Market as WFM. It has become a public company for 23 years since then. The Appendix A shows a list of key dates in the development history of the company.

Today, there are over 410 stores of Whole Foods throughout the United States, U.K., and Canada. There are more than 88,000 team members and the company is awarded as “100 Best Companies to Work For” by FORTUNE magazine for 18 years since the list’s inception. It listed 218 in the Fortune 500 list and all the accomplishments by Whole Foods ties closely with its strong corporate governance policies, including the Board, its Committees and the individual directors.

Roles and recent challenges of the Board

The Board of Directors is responsible for monitoring management’s operation and activities of the business, overseeing the company’s strategy formulation. Specifically, they engage more CEOs to manage Whole Foods and review the long-term strategy and approve annual operating and capital expenditure plans. Whole Foods Market publishes its product recalls on its website by showing what kinds of products are being recalled due to what kinds of possible health risks. For

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