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<i> Times Staff and Wire Reports</i>

United Biscuits to Sell Keebler Unit: United Biscuits agreed to sell its Keebler Co. cookie unit to Inflo Holdings, a joint venture between bread maker Flowers Industries Inc. and a Luxembourg-based investment fund, in a transaction valued at $500 million. The sale of America’s second-largest cookie company marks the first phase of United Biscuits’ flight from the United States, where it has been battered both by larger cookie and salty snack-food rivals, such as Nabisco Holdings Corp. and PepsiCo Inc., as well as low-priced private-label supermarket brands. Inflo Holdings will pay $482 million in cash and assume $18 million in debt for Keebler’s cookie business, the core of United Biscuits’ Elmhurst, Ill.-based Keebler unit.

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