Cadbury Chairman Insults Kraft in Open Letter

On September 14, 2009

Cadbury Chairman Insults Kraft in Open Letter

It wasn't enough for Cadbury to simply reject Kraft's surprise $16.7 billion takeover offer. Cadbury chairman Roger Carr had to spell out just how "unappealing" and "unattractive" he finds the prospect of a merger with "a low growth conglomerate" like Kraft. In an open letter to Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld, Carr described Kraft as "a company with a considerably less focused business mix and historically lower growth [than Cadbury]" and he reiterated that Cadbury is doing perfectly well on its own, thank you very much. But the letter also included a detailed breakdown of exactly why Cadbury is worth more than Kraft offered, and many are reading Cadbury's talk of independence as part of a clever bluff to provoke a...
On September 14, 2009

FPB Issues Good News/Bad News Lending Report

We'll let you be the judge of whether this qualifies as good news, but a new report indicates that banks aren't saying "no" to the idea of small business loans as often as before.  Instead, they're charging an arm and a leg when they sometimes say "yes."

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On September 14, 2009

Jack Covet Selects – The Leap

The Leap: How 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career from Good to Great by Rick Smith, Portfolio, 224 Pages, $24.95 Hardcover, September 2009, ISBN 9781591842569 Rick Smith starts The Leap by telling the story of how he went from co-writing a best selling book to being unemployed within a very short period of time. Unfortunately, [...]
On September 14, 2009

J&J Tinkers With Elan Deal, But It May Not Be Enough for Biogen

If Elan thinks that Johnson & Johnson's reduction by $100 million of the $1 billion it agreed to pay for an 18.4 percent stake in Elan will fix their problem with Biogen, they may have another thing coming, according to a reading of the agreement between them. The judge wasn't objecting to the price of deal, she was objecting to its form.
On September 14, 2009

EnCana Split Good News for Credit-Strapped Businesses

The resurrection of EnCana's plan to split into two independent energy companies offers some heartening fodder for credit-strapped businesses. It also provides a positive outlook -- at least from the company's head honchos -- on natural gas prices. EnCana announced last year intentions to divide the company into two, primarily along its operational lines -- natural gas and its oil and refining businesses. The collapse of the financial markets put more than a crimp in EnCana's plans and by October 2008 the company had delayed its reorganization. EnCana then spent the remainder of 2008 and the first two quarters of 2009 preparing for the eventual split of the companies. EnCana reduced its debt by 19 percent to $8.2 billion since it...
On September 14, 2009

Need to Smile More? Go Ride a Harley.

So my attorney brother flies back to Detroit, MI from Las Vegas to buy our dad’s Fatboy. He talks me into flying out and renting an HD to ride back with him. Not a cheap little trip, but boy did it crack open a much needed surge of levity in my life. I LOVED my [...]
On September 14, 2009

Google Wave Needs Facebook Know-How

Facebook is one of those web properties that people love to speculate should be in play, and who else to buy but Google? Forgetting for a moment that this is unlikely ever to happen, it would be a smart move for Google, but not for the "positioning" reasons you might think. No, Google needs Facebook because it knows how to do something that Google will have to learn.
On September 14, 2009

How to Stop Making Yourself Crazy with Self-Editing

Write. Edit. Write. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Write. Does this sound familiar? If it doesn’t then you’re probably from Mars, because most of us drive ourselves crazy with self-editing when we write. And it’s not only when writing. We self-edit when we’re walking. When you walk on gravel, you walk differently than when you walk on grass. We self-edit [...]
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