Snow Brand Foods Co. disbanded Tuesday, just over three months after it admitted it had deliberately mislabeled meat products in an effort to swindle the state. The Tokyo Stock Exchange delisted Snow Brand Foods, a subsidiary of Snow Brand Milk Products Co., the same day.
The firm's earnings deteriorated sharply following revelations that it had passed off Australian beef as Japanese to benefit from a government buyback scheme introduced in the wake of a mad cow disease outbreak in the fall.
Earlier this month, Snow Brand Foods shareholders endorsed a management plan to dissolve the company and entrusted President Koshiro Iwase and five other board members with the task of winding it up.
The firm dismissed some 800 of its 930 regular employees at the end of March, 292 of whom had found new jobs as of April 19, according to a Snow Brand Foods spokesman.