CLIF BAR EXECS INK SWEET DEAL

Gary Erickson was offered a tantalizing sum from Quaker Oats in 2000 to sell Clif Bar & Company, his upstart energy-bar maker: US$120 million. He walked away. As the company's website put it: “CLIF Is Not For Sale.” Twenty-two years later, that calculus has changed. Erickson and his wife, Kit Crawford, this week accepted a Us$2.9-billion buyout from snack giant Mondelez International Inc. Once completed, the acquisition will catapult the California-based couple into the class of self-made billionaires. By rebuffing the earlier offer and taking Mondelez's deal, Erickson and Crawford have banked a 2,400-per-cent gain from keeping the energy-bar company family and employee owned since the turn of the century. They extended 20 per cent of their shares to workers as a retirement benefit in 2010, while retaining the remaining 80 per cent.