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Letter: Protecting Cadbury jobs
Tuesday 26th January 2010, 8:11AM GMT.
Letter: Perhaps when we next eat a piece of Cadbury chocolate we will recall it was this government that gave up its power to intervene on the grounds of national interest in the case of hostile foreign bids for UK companies.
By its action, New Labour has set the clock ticking for when Kraft moves its Cadbury operations (and 6,000 jobs) to Eastern Europe to secure the reduced costs that will help pay off the debt incurred in buying the company.
We should also ponder the fact that the Cadbury takeover would not happen in France or Germany.
In 2005 the French promised “an arsenal of measures aimed at protecting France’s major companies from foreign predators” .
Why don’t we have politicians who put Britain first?
Roger France
Muxton
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Roger France asked “Why don’t we have politicians who put Britain first?”.
Because they’re too busy putting themselves and their friends first.
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from the letter
“Why don’t we have politicians who put Britain first”
In this case i will ask “why dont we have shareholders of cadburys putting Britain 1st rather than their own pockets”
It may be a british company but some facts
1. It is a global business although it is registered in the UK.
2. It has completed takeovers of other brands in the past which have meant job cuts at those companies.
3. In 2007, Cadbury’s closed a British factory and transferred the production to other British sites and to Poland – this affected up to 700 jobs.
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Roger France misses the point that, although Cadbury’s is registered in the UK, it is a global firm and 50% of its ownership prior to the Kraft offer are US Citizens & corporations.
Roger France is clearly not aware that Cadbury’s has, for many years, completed takeovers and mergers of dozens of companies in the UK and abroad which have led to job losses in this country.
Roger France hasn’t noticed that in 2007, Cadbury’s closed a British factory and transferred the production to other British sites and to Poland – this affected up to 700 jobs.
It is interesting to learn that Government-owned Royal Bank of Scotland has leant Kraft the money to buy Cadbury’s. No doubt, the debt incurred with RBS by Kraft will be transferred to Cadbury’s in the same way as the Glazers have operated in buying Manchester United.
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I’m confused, people supposedly support Capitalism, but not it’s consequences. You can’t on one hand complain that the Government is interfering in private enterprise, creating red tape and then moan that they let PLCs act like PLCs.
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Roger,
If we had fully implemented the sort of EU protectionism that France and Germany have, then we would not be in the situation where predatory US companies can come in and asset-strip UK companies.
Unfortunately, we have historically had an ambivalent attitude towards our European pertners, preferring to adopt a one foot in, one foot out approach, whether that is driven by xenophobia, a fondness for free market capitalism, a longing for lost empire or whatever.
The simple fact it that we can’t have it both ways. If we had implemented such restrictions there would also be UK companies that would be limited in their ability to pursue acquisitions in the US, something in which from a capitalist persepctive at least, the UK has had some previous success.
I, like you, am deeply saddened at the loss of Cadbury to a US-based plastic cheese maker, and fear for the future of Bournville and its workers, but I don’t think you can blame the government – this is simply free-market capitalism at its worst.
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Disgusting we have lost a company with a long tradition going back all of two years since they where demerged with Schweppes. And now owned by those nasty American capitalists who will keep all their profit for their shareholders instead of supporting orphan kitten centres as Cadburys did with theirs
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Cadbury’s worlwide employees number about 40,000 but only 6,000 are in the UK.
What a pity we cannot get a foreign government to take the UK over. Think of the savings on labour costs and their pensions if all of the UK’s local and central government was outsourced to Eastern Europe, India or China. I expect we could get GP’s from one of these countries to work for less than £125,000 a year, office hours only.
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