• Financial Times/Reuters, Thursday, July 12, 2007 1 PM

Using an alias, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey posted messages for years on a Yahoo financial forum in which he praised his own company and predicted a bleak future for Wild Oats Markets, the rival it has since sought to acquire.

"The end game is now underway for [Wild Oats] ... Whole Foods is systematically destroying their viability as a business--market by market, city by city," Mackey wrote in a March 28 2006 post using the pseudonym "rahodeb" -- the name of his wife, Deborah, spelled backwards.

The disclosure came in a court document filed by the Federal Trade Commission, which is attempting to block Whole Foods' planned $565 million acquisition of Wild Oats on grounds the deal would hobble competition and increase prices to consumers.

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