Commercial Finance Specialists

Cadbury's board has approved a new £11.5 billion takeover bid by US food conglomerate Kraft after rejecting another offer only last week.

Kraft sought £7 billion in asset lending to complete the deal, which is a significant improvement on the £9.8 billion bid tabled last year.

Under the new offer, shareholders are being offered a deal valued at 840p per share, with an additional 10p per share dividend for each.

This consists of 500p per share in cash, with the additional amount made up by shares in Kraft.

Commenting on the new asset financing offer from Kraft, chairman of Cadbury Roger Carr said that the shareholders "will now work with the Kraft Foods management to ensure the continued success and growth of the business for the benefit of our customers, consumers and employees".

Only last week, Cadbury published an updated response to a Kraft takeover bid on December 4th 2009.

In it, Mr Carr had described the former Kraft offer as "very significantly below all comparable transactions in the sector; applying any of the comparable multiples would imply a price per share far above Kraft's offer".