Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Chocolate Class War


Cadbury's announced this year that it would cut 7,800 jobs world wide and is currently fighting union resistance to factory closures in the UK .


However , billionaire corporate raider Nelson Peltz, who has been building a stake in the confectionery giant has been demanding that Cadbury Schweppes should return as much as £1.7 billion to shareholders after the spin-off of its US drinks business next year or face an attempted boardroom coup . He and his confederates dmand that by adopting more aggressive trading margin targets, Cadbury could push the value of its shares up to 970p and pay a special dividend of 80p per share – handing back £1.7bn in total – when the drinks business is spun off. The stock was up 15p to 623p yesterday. Cadbury's chief executive promised this year to raise the company's trading margins from about 10 per cent currently to a mid-teens percentage by 2011. Mr Peltz says the target should be closer to 20 per cent


The veteran financier made hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from previous forays in the food and drink business, most recently buying Snapple for $300m (£149m) and selling it three years later for $1.5bn.


So there is the answer to why jobs are lost or out-sourced - to fill the pockets of investors

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