Kraft’s Cadbury takeover triggers management exodus

An article in the Daily Mail today makes a neat link back to an important strategy case study from earlier this year when Kraft Foods acquired Cadbury plc. If the article’s sources are to be believed (always a concern when reading the Daily Mail), then the integration of the two businesses is creating quite a fallout amongst senior Cadbury management. Apparently:

“A total of 120 out of 170 managers and executives have quit since Kraft took control of the 200-year-old company in February after a bitterly fought £11.5billion takeover battle!”

Of course Kraft Foods would have been hoping that many of those managers would have wanted to leave anyway. Their estimates of the cost-saving synergies from putting the two businesses together would have assumed an attrition rate amongst Cadbury plc management. Some Kraft will be happy to see leave; others less so. It all depends on the extent of duplication of management roles.

What the exodus does illustrate, however, is the integration challenge faced by Kraft.