page_title: Shaklee
section_title: Expansion, divestiture, changes of ownership
hierarchical_section_title: Shaklee / History / Expansion, divestiture, changes of ownership
caption_attribution_description: English: Shaklee Corporation headquarters in Pleasanton.
context_page_description: Shaklee Corporation is an American manufacturer and multi-level marketing distributor of natural nutrition supplements, weight-management products, beauty products, and household products. The company is based in Pleasanton, California with global operations in Canada, China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, and Taiwan.
  On November 30, 2018, Shaklee suspended its operations in Mexico after 26 years.
context_section_description: Shaklee Corporation was a publicly traded company in the late 1970s and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1980, the firm relocated its headquarters to a state-of-the-art skyscraper in San Francisco's Financial District. The corporation began to diversify in November 1986 when it purchased the Bear Creek Corporation, a direct marketing company best known for its Harry and David Fruit-of-the-Month Club operation, from RJR Nabisco for $123 million.
  In February 1989 Shaklee sold its 78 percent interest in Shaklee Japan to the Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical Company for $350 million, while maintaining its licensing agreement and continuing to collect royalty payments from the Japanese operations.
  In March 1989, Shaklee Corporation received an unsolicited acquisition proposal from a group led by Irwin L. Jacobs, the Minneapolis financier known also by his nickname "Irv the Liquidator". Analysts placed the leveraged buyout value of Shaklee at $35 a share. The Jacobs group had been aggressively accumulating Shaklee shares, and disclosed it currently held a 14.98 percent stake in the San Francisco-based company. Shaklee immediately declared a special dividend of $20 a share, seen as a poison pill—a way to discourage takeover interest in Shaklee, though the company disputed that view. Shaklee's anti-takeover provisions came into play when an investor reached 15 percent.
  During the next few weeks, Jacobs increased his stake in Shaklee,
  however, Shaklee Corporation then announced it was being acquired by Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical for $28 a share in cash, or about $395 million. Yamanouchi's partnership with Shaklee in Japan helped make the transaction possible, and cast Yamanouchi as a "white knight" in helping Shaklee fend off the hostile takeover bid by Jacobs. Jacobs announced he would not challenge the Yamanouchi bid and the deal with Yamanouchi was quickly finalized, making Shaklee a privately held company. In the spring of 2000, the company relocated its headquarters from downtown San Francisco to a new complex in suburban Pleasanton.
  In April 2004, Yamanouchi sold Shaklee Corporation to American multi-millionaire Roger Barnett, managing partner of Activated Holdings LLC and a member of the Wolfson family, for $310 million. Bear Creek and the Harry and David line was sold to Wasserstein Perella & Co. for $260 million.
  Shaklee promotes itself as a company committed to being green.
caption: Shaklee headquarters in Pleasanton
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