Surviving the Kraft acquisition of Cadbury
Very nice to see that the Financial Times has yesterday reiterated the advice from this blog and Surviving M&A book about how to survive an acquisition. The news is now that Cadbury WILL now be bought by Kraft, as the revised price of the offer has now reached a level where the board of Cadbury can no longer argue that the shareholders benefit.
But the employees of Cadbury should certainly be worried. On average, 10% of the workforce in an acquisition will be fired. Sometimes it’s as high as one-third! This, despite the assurances of Kraft that they will even keep open the planned plant closures in England that had previously been announced by Cadbury.
It was nice to see that Stefan Stern of the Financial Times included in his blog the ‘top ten tips’ for those Cadbury managers. You can see his blog here. The advice actually applies to ALL Cadbury employees…
As noted in one of the comments to that blog and also as I’ve written in my book, first employees should determine whether they actually want to stay, because now may be an excellent time to leave.
Surviving M&A 
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