Cadbury demands Kraft “put up or shut up”
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Cadbury has asked the Takeover Panel to present Kraft with a “put up or shut up” ultimatum following the latter’s attempted £10.2bn takeover offer for its rival.
The owner of brands including Dairy Milk, Wispa and Trident reportedly approached the panel yesterday (September 21) to ask the US food company Kraft to impose a deadline to make a formal bid or walk away for at least six months.
Kraft, which made an initial £10.2bn offer earlier this month, was swiftly rejected by Cadbury.
Cadbury chairman Roger Carr last week wrote an open letter criticising Kraft for being “a company with a considerably less focused business mix and historically lower growth”.
Cadbury’s largest shareholder, Legal & General, has also said that Kraft’s proposal “materially undervalued” the group.
The move by Kraft is now speculated to trigger other multinationals, such as Nestlé, Mars and Hershey’s, to launch their own bids for Cadbury.
Kraft owns brands including Toblerone, Philadelphia, Kenco, and Terry’s Confectionary range.
Readers' comments (2)
James Amoroso | Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:27 am
There will be no further bids. All Cadbury's competitors are rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of Cadbury being 'absorbed' into Kraft. I deliberately avoided the use of the word 'integrated'.
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zoltan nagy | Tue, 22 Sep 2009 4:06 pm
Nestlé will wait for Kraft to withraw and then offer something even less reasonable. Yahoo - made of chocolate. They wouldn't just let such a traditional brand go.
Kraft can only gain space for Milka if they take on the other lilac brand and then simply replace the Cadbury participants in the high quality segment with Milka. They would still impact on each other.
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