NEW YORK (Standard&Poor's) July 1, 2008--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services today said that the ratings and outlook on ConAgra Foods Inc. (BBB+/Negative/A-2) would be unaffected by the company's announcement that it has entered into a $900 million accelerated share repurchase program which the company will fund from a portion of the proceeds from the recently completed sale of its Trading and Merchandising segment (total proceeds of about $2.8 billion). ConAgra also used a portion of these proceeds to repay debt. Pro forma for these transactions, we expect total debt to EBITDA to improve to about 2.5x in fiscal 2009 from about 3x currently, and funds from operations to total debt to about 30% from about 25% on a
