The Most Delicious $19,500,000,000 Ever Spent

Normally I sit and scratch my head while reading business related news articles. My degree in film and video studies didn't prepare me at all to understand the intricacies of chapter 11 whatnots, corporate merger whoseits, and majority shareholder shenanigans, but today that mattered not. Today, I read the most mouth watering piece of business news ever to be scribed in cold and dry ink by those who ply their trade in reporting the cold and dry stuff. I'm talking about the selling of Cadbury to Kraft for $19.5 billion.

The AP cited Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld as saying that the deal provides "both immediate value certainty and upside potential." What she forgot to add to the end of that sentence was "...for deliciousness." So I'll fix it for her. The deal provides "both immediate value certainty and upside potential [for deliciousness]." There, that's more like it.

How much chocolate can 19.5 billion dollars actually buy? While reading about the buyout I imagined miles of trucks filled with Cadbury chocolates lined up outside of Kraft's World Headquarters. I imagined Warren Buffet munching on and deliriously enjoying a king sized Toblerone as he negotiated his innumerable shares of Kraft. I imagined stock piles of "The cheesiest" Kraft macaroni and cheese being disposed of to make room for stock piles of Cadbury creme eggs. I imagined a world being ruled by a mega rich chocalate king who lives in a palace comparable to Willy Wonka's factory. I imagined utopia.

I don't know the details of what exactly this deal entails. I imagine with all that money being spent a lot of changes will occur. People will lose jobs, factories will close, the British will seethe in bitterness over their no longer owning a beloved brand, the cadbury bunny will be replaced by the Trix rabbit, who knows. All I know is that I'm thrilled about Irene Rosenfeld's call for the deal's upside potential for deliciousness. In the end isn't that all that really matters.

Ryan