Bye Bye Cadbury

Leaving aside the obvious puns about flaky directors, fudged deals, wispa'd rumours, credit crunchie, and assets being milked (although I will of course list them here in a potentially ill-judged attempt to demonstrate literary flair), today's take-over of Cadbury, by the American plastic cheese manufacturer, 'Kraft', is an unmitigated prolapse in the fabric of human, environmental, and economic well-being.

There was no justifiable reason for Cadbury to be bought out. It wasn't teetering on the brink of extinction; it was a high-growth successful company, with an iconic brand name and a firm fan-base. So why was it bought out, and why is that bad for us all?

When Kraft - a flat-lining, low growth, conglomerate mess - first approached Cadbury with an offer some 5 months ago, they were soundly turned down. But when the hedge funds got wind of the approach, they bet on Kraft's tenacity and started buying up large swathes of shares in Cadbury, hoping that any takeover would push up Cadbury's share price. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy - by owning a large percentage of Cadbury shares, the hedge funds had significant sway over what the board of directors chose to do (as the board simply has to reflect the wishes of the share holders). So with the hedge funds putting pressure on, Cadbury was sold, and the share price shot up, making a few already very rich people a lot more money. In addition to that, investment bankers, lawyers, accountants and PR advisers have racked up fees at a rate of more than £2m a day for the last 5 months in the battle for control of Cadbury - "£2m a day cost of Cadbury deal – plus £12m for the boss"

The deal-makers and the fixers rake in the cash, while everyone else picks up the pieces. Kraft took on £7bn of debt in order to buy Cadbury, which means there's going to be a large amount of 'rationalisation' - code for job losses and asset stripping. Cadbury's fair trade certification is a prime contender for the axe when the cost-cutting begins. Think the Glazer's, but with chocolate.

Gordon Brown's promises to insure that 'levels of investment' remain the same and that 'jobs' are made 'secure', is completely redundant. Decisions from now on will be made in Illinois, once removed from the soon-to-be jobless humans in Bournville, and anything Brown says about 'pressure' on Kraft is a load of hot air.

A stable economy, like pretty much a stable anything else, relies on diversity to flourish. If Kraft ever comes tumbling down, it'll now bring Cadbury with it. And economy's not the only thing to suffer from the destruction of diversity. We all lose out. A couple of days ago George Monbiot wrote the following: 'All industries strive not only towards monopoly but also towards mono­culture: domination of the natural or cultural landscape. This is what George Orwell meant when he remarked that "the logical end of mechanical progress is to reduce the human being to something resembling a brain in a bottle". Industry, if left unchecked, tolerates no deviance. It seeks to shrink both the range of human experience and the wonders of the natural world until they fit into the container it has made for them.'

And he's right. That's what unchecked industry does; merges everything into an indistinguishable grey gloop, in which everything is owned by everything else and men spend their days slapping each other on the back and giving motivational speeches. It is diversity which is the cultural fabric of our lives. Charles de Gaulle once moaned that it was tricky managing a country that produces four hundred types of cheese, but I don't think anyone seriously wants to live in a dairylea world.

Plenty of City boys and girls will be popping corks next week over a job well done. Before long there will be brutal cuts to public spending in order to pay for a recession caused by the short-term, purely profit-driven thinking of financiers. In the post-recession world, nothing has changed.

So, who to turn the impotent wrath of my blame on? Well apart from the soulless individuals who somehow manage to justify spending their life doing a job which essentially consists of buying things and then selling things to make money for other people, with no view to the consequences of their actions, I think the buck really has to stop with the government. Business is business, industry is what industry does, to expect any form of ethical self-regulation is deluded. Unfortunately, the Labour government removed the last vestiges of a public interest clause in competition law back in 1998, leaving them ludicrously impotent when it comes to intervening in business. Mandelson's recent warning to the Cadbury's bidders that they could not 'come here and make a fast buck' was laughable. It's time the government took a real stance against the shameless, money-driven, anti-human mob that is the financial sector, because while we wait, diversity is melting, and congealing into a pool of celebrity biography and processed cheese. Obama stood up and started, and now we have to join him.

UPDATE: 09/02/10 - Surprise surprise, Kraft have announced they will be closing the Cadbury factory in Somerdale after all. The factory was due to be closed by Cadbury anyway, but Kraft had promised that if their takeover was successful then they would keep it open.