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IN the end, Roger Carr, the Cadbury chairman, had no choice. He may feel satisfied that he persuaded Kraft to raise its offer from 745p to today's 840p but deep down there has to be the realisation that the Americans have got the British chocolate-maker for a song.
Proof of that comes from a look back at when the bid was first announced, in September. Then, analyst Andrew Wood, of Sanford Bernstein & Co, was on record as saying £10.70 was the right price. Ateam from City firm Evolution was even predicting between £11 and £12 a share. They based that on the earlier deal, last year, between Mars and Wrigley. Mars paid 19.5 times earnings for the chewing gum manufacturer. Cadbury owns Adams - Wrigley's arch-rival and regarded by Kraft as a key prize in the takeover. Applying a lower multiple to Cadbury's chocolate business of say, 13 times, would still result in somewhere over £11.
Allowing for the fact that Mars completed its Wrigley buy before the recession hit, there is no question that Kraft is not paying enough. Only yesterday, Todd Stitzer, Cadbury's chief executive, was quoted as saying: "You can find some analysts who believe that if we deliver at the mid-point of our 2013 targets, our share price will be comfortably over £10. That's the world we're shooting for. We think there is that kind of value that exists in our business."
The problem for Carr was that while he may have believed one thing, many of his shareholders thought another. US pension fund manager Franklin Mutual, Cadbury's biggest investor, with seven per cent, argued that he should accept 830p to 840p.
The result is that while many investors have made a killing - Cadbury shares were 554p in July, when rumours started to circulate of Kraft's possible interest - another British brand has gone overseas. There's no doubt that is a moment for sadness. Cadbury, with its Quaker tradition and paternalistic heritage, was one of those companies identified with our glorious industrial past.
Unfortunately, it is very much is the past - of Cadbury's 40,000-plus employees, just 5,600 work in the UK and Ireland. The idea that Cadbury is an entirely British-only manufacturer is nonsense. Even Bournville, its iconic plain chocolate label, is not made in the historic factory village of the same name outside Birmingham, but in France. Nevertheless, Cadbury was managed in Britain and now that power has been ceded to Illinois, base of Kraft. Whatever Kraft may say, it is much easier in the future to cut jobs and take decisions that may harm the workforce of an outpost thousands of miles away in a different land, than one much closer to home in the US.
In that regard, however, Cadbury joins the numerous British companies that have fallen to foreign predators in recent years. Likewise, it's more than a little rich for Lord Mandelson and others to begin waving the Union Jack in Cadbury's defence. This Government has pursued a relentless "open door" policy, with the result that management of a large swathe of UK PLC (much of it economically and strategically more significant than Cadbury) now resides abroad.
It's far too late to close that door -even for the producer of our favourite Dairy Milk and Creme Eggs.
