A 'Cadbury's Law' to prevent foreign takeovers of key British firms will be in Gordon Brown's manifesto on Monday.
Currently, a simple majority of shareholders can accept a takeover. Labour wants that threshold raised to two-thirds in firms where there is a national interest in keeping a company British.
It is almost certainly illegal under EU law, secondly discouraging investment in British industry could only be a bad thing and thirdly since when is the manufacture of chocolate and associated confectionery a vital national concern?
5 comments:
i know its against all laws of economics and normalcy to have this view, but how is a foreign company buying a uk company, then farming out production to Poland and making loads of people redundant a good thing?
???
When someone wanted to take over Danone the French government blocked it on the grounds of the strategic importance of the vital yogurt industry.
biggerpicture - to give them credit, the Left and trades unions in the UK are outraged about moving production to Poland and leaving UK people jobless.
What they would have preferred is for lots of Poles to take jobs at ever lower wages in the UK factories, leaving UK people jobless. It's called 'Globalisation In One Country'.
Er, burnthebiggerpicture - you obviously meant to say "but how is a foreign company buying a uk company, which had already established production in France and Poland and was busily transferring even more production to Poland and about to make even more workers redundant a good thing?" of course - Cadbury were already well down the line of dumping their british workers, Kraft have just picked up their existing plans and stuck with them ... as to why buy, Kraft wanted the brand name and the market share and the facilities established in the EU by Cadbury, is all ...
Bigger Picture- Anon has said it all really, it wasn't a case of whether production would be moved overseas but simply who would do it.
Laban- Obviously the likes of Defence, Yogurt and Energy are key sectors.
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