Hostess Brands Inc., the bankrupt maker of Wonder Bread and Twinkies, picked the team of Apollo Global Management LLC and C. Dean Metropoulos & Co. as the lead bidder for its cake brands, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The offer becomes the stalking-horse bid for an auction of the cakes business that includes CupCakes, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos. Flowers Foods Inc., the Thomasville, Ga.-based owner of brands that include Nature’s Own and Tastykake, was earlier selected as the stalking-horse bidder for most of Hostess’s bread brands with a $360 million offer. Flowers is also the stalking-horse bidder for Hostess’s Beefsteak bread brand with a $30 million bid. That auction is scheduled for Feb. 28.
