Consolidation in the fish business is nothing new. Big fish have been swallowing smaller fish for years. But so far this year, the scale of mergers and acquisitions, especially in the salmon business, has raised eyebrows. The most dramatic — and best-timed — deal is the resurrection of PanFish, the high-flying Norwegian salmon-farming company that ended up in the hands of the banks a few years ago. That's when the farmed-salmon industry, which was bleeding red ink in another of its low-price, high-production cycles, caught the eye of John Fredriksen, Norway's richest man. He saw an inefficient, fragmented industry he could dominate. So he started buying shares of PanFish and waited to make his big move.
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