So you’re Art Winkleblack, CFO of ketchup maker Heinz, and a week ago your boss, Bill Johnson, raised eyebrows by saying Campbell Soup Co. would be a “nice fit” with your company.
 
Now you are answering analysts questions during the quarterly earnings conference call and the boss isn’t on the line. 
 
Finally, the question comes, from Eric Katzman at Deutsche
 Bank:
 
“Maybe this, again, is more to Bill. Unfortunately, Art, you are the one who gets it. But what was Bill thinking about at the annual meeting when he responded regarding the Campbell’s Soup comment? Can you kind of go into more detail regarding that?”
 
Winkleblack responded with a detailed analysis of all the synergies that could be achieved by combining… um, no. He didn’t. 
 
“Actually, the reaction to what I would term as an offhand comment last week. I don’t think I am even going to go there, Eric.”
 
Oh, well. Here’s what he said when Katzman asked about the scale of possible acquisitions:
 
“I would just generally say that, as always, we look to add shareholder value and create value for our shareholders. So that could be bigger or smaller, but you can rest assured that we know that our job one is to drive shareholder value. That is going to be our focus.”

(Reuters photo of Heinz CEO Johnson)