Kraft Foods performs massive U-turn
Only days after grabbing control of Cadbury and seemingly looking to the UK to expand its manufacturing capabilities, Kraft Foods has performed a dramatic and very controversial U-turn. The company has this morning confirmed the closure of a Cadbury factory near Bristol with the loss of 400 jobs with production being transferred to Poland next year. This has caught the UK authorities, the unions and ex-Cadbury directors by surprise as there was no prior warning of any potential job cuts.
However, former Cadbury chairman Roger Carr has this morning launched a stinging attack on the UK government for failing to defend "strategic firms". This is a direct reference to Lord Mandelson's intervention in the Cadbury takeover saga when he seemed to indicate that the company would receive some kind of protection from the UK authorities if there was any suspicion of "asset stripping". In reality there was never any hope that the UK authorities could step in and block any bid from the US giant purely and simply on value terms.
Whether we will see any formal strategic protection for UK companies in the future remains to be seen but when you operate in a free market you do risk attracting offers from larger and stronger competitors.
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