Kraft Food’s $16.7 billion bid for U.K. confectionery firm Cadbury shows chairman and CEO Irene Rosenfeld is out to capture overseas growth, according to a Bloomberg report. Kraft, the world’s second-largest foodmaker, said yesterday it will pursue the takeover to create a company with $50 billion in annual revenue. Since Rosenfeld took command of Kraft in June 2006, the company completed the purchase of the Iberian units of United Biscuits Group and paid $7.8 billion for Paris-based Groupe Danone’s biscuit unit. Rosenfeld, 56, took the bid for Cadbury directly to shareholders yesterday after the U.K. maker of Trident Gum and Dairy Milk chocolate rejected Kraft’s offer as inadequate. The purchase would give her access to emerging markets such as India and complementary products for Kraft’s lines of biscuits, powdered drinks, chocolate and dairy foods. “This proposed combination is about growth,” Rosenfeld said. According to a letter from Rosenfeld to Cadbury chairman Roger Carr that was released by Kraft, the two met Aug. 28 to discuss the takeover proposal. Cadbury’s prospects, ability to fully realize operational efficiencies and capacity to invest are necessarily constrained given its limited scale and scope relative to larger global competitors,” Rosenfeld said in her letter to Carr. The meeting took place in London, according to two people familiar with the matter. Kraft has been interested in Cadbury since before Kraft was spun off from Altria Group in 2007, the sources said. Rosenfeld was named CEO in June 2006 and has spent about 25 years at Kraft, with a three-year interruption to run PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay snack-food unit.
Kraft Move Signals Overseas Expansion
According to a letter from Rosenfeld to Cadbury chairman Roger Carr that was released by Kraft, the two met Aug. 28 to discuss the takeover proposal.
September 8, 2009