RBS funds Cadbury takeover
chocks away! | 01.04.2010 13:23 | Globalisation
More proof of taxpayer owned Royal Banks of Scotland, funding destruction.
It's hardly Tar-Sands, but still shows the ruthlessness of RBS.
It's hardly Tar-Sands, but still shows the ruthlessness of RBS.
I was reminded of this by the aricle on RBS funding of the Tar Sands exploitation.
I hope some (ex) employees of Cadbury comment on this article to fill in the gaps.
.
Now the curious case of how RBS helped finance the takeover of a British company, and the export of British jobs to Poland.
Kraft foods, a US company, used money supplied by RBS, a British bank, to buy up Cadbury, a British institution chocolate maker. Now Kraft is closing down many of its British factories to transfer the jobs to Poland and elsewhere.
Cadbury was founded by John Cadbury, a Quaker, who set out to use the profits from his business, to give his workers good working conditions, decent housing and education, against a backdrop of the 'dark Satanic mills' of Victorian Britain.
Then in 1962, the Cadbury family floated the business on the stock market, transferring responsibility for the workforce to market forces. In 2009, Kraft, already carrying massive debts, saw a killing to be made, and made a successful takeover bid for Cadbury, borrowing money from RBS to do so.
During the buy out, Kraft promised to keep factories in Britain going, indeed, without this promise their takeover bid would probably have failed. But they lied of course, truth is the first casualty of war and profit-making.
So without help from RBS, 60% owned by British taxpayers, Cadbury would still be British owned and the workers would still be able to make aliving and be treated like human beings. Instead they find themselves on the scrapheap, uneconomic labour units no longer needed to fund the avarice of shareholders.
The original 'enlightened capitalism' model is now over with the takeover of Cadbury by Kraft. leaving only the dead hand of the market to decide who works and who doesn't, who lives and who dies.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/markets/article.html?in_article_id=493713&in_page_id=3
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/791b7f1c-0792-11df-915f-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=da5b2be8-9c6b-11de-ab58-00144feabdc0.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8492572.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/30/kraft-irene-rosenfeld-payrise-cadbury
I hope some (ex) employees of Cadbury comment on this article to fill in the gaps.
.
Now the curious case of how RBS helped finance the takeover of a British company, and the export of British jobs to Poland.
Kraft foods, a US company, used money supplied by RBS, a British bank, to buy up Cadbury, a British institution chocolate maker. Now Kraft is closing down many of its British factories to transfer the jobs to Poland and elsewhere.
Cadbury was founded by John Cadbury, a Quaker, who set out to use the profits from his business, to give his workers good working conditions, decent housing and education, against a backdrop of the 'dark Satanic mills' of Victorian Britain.
Then in 1962, the Cadbury family floated the business on the stock market, transferring responsibility for the workforce to market forces. In 2009, Kraft, already carrying massive debts, saw a killing to be made, and made a successful takeover bid for Cadbury, borrowing money from RBS to do so.
During the buy out, Kraft promised to keep factories in Britain going, indeed, without this promise their takeover bid would probably have failed. But they lied of course, truth is the first casualty of war and profit-making.
So without help from RBS, 60% owned by British taxpayers, Cadbury would still be British owned and the workers would still be able to make aliving and be treated like human beings. Instead they find themselves on the scrapheap, uneconomic labour units no longer needed to fund the avarice of shareholders.
The original 'enlightened capitalism' model is now over with the takeover of Cadbury by Kraft. leaving only the dead hand of the market to decide who works and who doesn't, who lives and who dies.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/markets/article.html?in_article_id=493713&in_page_id=3 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/791b7f1c-0792-11df-915f-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=da5b2be8-9c6b-11de-ab58-00144feabdc0.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8492572.stm http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/30/kraft-irene-rosenfeld-payrise-cadbury
chocks away!
Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
the benefits of being ownership... you can do what you want
01.04.2010 16:46
You are transfering ownership into shares that can be traded.
Can't have it both ways, either keep the company or sell it to do what the new owners want.
tab
eh?
01.04.2010 21:05
If you want to stop this sort of stuff from happening, then set up a cooperative and put in a bid to buy up the factories being shut down. There is an opportunity here. Stop moaning about the bosses behaving like the scum they've always been, and make some real change. Or is all people really interested in their pensions?
unenlightened anarchist
@unenlightened anarchist
01.04.2010 23:13
Glad you're angry.
'Enlightened Capitalism' is just a term for what the likes of Cadbury, Fry, Owen and others used to give working people some semblance of human life in the midst of unimaginable squalor. They did what they could in the constraints of the world they lived in, and contributed to the rise of a more caring society than existed at the time. Had they been more enlightened they would have turned over their factories to the workers.
I agree with most of your sentiments though. I was just drawing further attention to the fact that RBS are totally unprincipled bastards, and with OUR money too (isn't it always?'.
chocks away!
What confuses me is this
02.04.2010 09:56
Why does RBS not simply buy Kraft?
And yes, I am being wilfully stupid. But I do think that the approach Kraft has taken is essentially junk bonding and that RBS should not be supporting them.
confused shareholder