To many people, the Diamond name is something they grab for in the snack aisle when they need nuts for a recipe or a party. But like Land O’Lakes, Ocean Spray and Sunkist, Diamond Foods Inc. is a major national food brand that has roots as a historic farmers’ cooperative. Organized in 1912 by California’s walnut growers, Stockton-based Diamond is now a global food company with a product line that also includes Pop Secret popcorn, Emerald snack nuts and Kettle Chips. Its ambitious growth plan has recently been fueled by an unusual transaction — the move from co-op to public company (Nasdaq: DMND). Diamond reported revenues of $571 million in fiscal 2009, up 7.5 percent from the previous year. Its $615 million acquisition of the American and British operations of Kettle Foods, completed in March, is positioning the company for further growth abroad.
THE QUICK BIO
Vice President and General Counsel Stephen Kim, 40, was born into a family of doctors in Detroit, but he decided on a different direction from the start. He went to Johns Hopkins with the plan to become a philosophy professor, and tacked German onto that major so he could read the German philosophers in their original language. After spending his junior year abroad in Munich, Kim began to rethink. “That’s when I began considering going into law, which seemed to require some of the same disciplines — close reading of texts, clear writing and the need to articulate arguments.” After earning his bachelor’s Kim moved on to NYU law school, graduating in 1994. He did general corporate work in the New York office of Weil Gotshal & Manges, then at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto between 1996 to 2000. He was recruited by software start-up Oblix, which was acquired by Oracle Corp. in 2005. Kim took a few months off to “decompress, spend time with family and get some stuff done around the house” until a call came from Gordon Davidson, Fenwick & West chairman and outside counsel to Diamond.
