Next, Guy Hands brings Cadbury home. With hindsight, the sale of our favorite chocolate manufacturer to Kraft of the US in 2009 has been a disappointment. True, it hasn’t been a disaster but one of the world’s great brands has lost its specialness.
Cadbury is now part of the anonymous American conglomerate Mondelez (Ever heard of them? Nope, me neither). Here’s the potential twist. With Mondelez’s share price lackluster at best, and plenty of free cashflow, it is a perfect target for a private equity bid.
Hands, an aggressive deal-maker, could put together an offer, take over the whole business, sell off a few brands such as Ritz crackers that no one cares about very much to recoup some cash, and then relist Cadbury on the London market. We would like it back – and Hands would redeem himself for losing EMI.
Thirdly, Aldi buys M&S. First it, er, “borrowed” Colin the Caterpillar with its Cuthbert cake. Next, it allegedly copied the snazzy-looking light-up gin. Aldi keeps on breaking new ground, to put it politely, in the interpretation of intellectual property laws.
Here’s a solution. Instead of nipping down to M&S every time it needs some inspiration, the German retailer, one of the richest and most successful private companies in the world, could simply buy the whole business.
True, M&S has done a lot better than usual this year, but no one can quite get their head around its weird combination of food retailing, a clothes shop, and joint-venture with Ocado. Odd would be a tactful word for its portfolio, and batty a blunter one.
Aldi could buy the whole thing, sell off clothing to Next, cash out of Ocado and keep the classy food business. M&S quality at Aldi prices would be a great combination especially with inflation rampant – and the lawyers could stop expensively arguing about the difference between multi-legged Colins and Cuthberts.
Four, Dyson buys Jaguar Land Rover. Under Tata’s ownership, the UK’s most prestigious car brand has hardly been setting the world alight. In the latest quarter, it posted a loss of more than £300m as it was hit by the shortage of chips.
It is hard to see it turning into the new BMW now. Meanwhile, Sir James Dyson, a man who is clearly the UK’s most successful, and innovative, manufacturing and engineering entrepreneur has recently given up on his ambitions to build an electric vehicle.
It is not hard to see the solution to both problems. Dyson buys Jaguar Land Rover and builds a new range of battery-powered vehicles.
For all Tesla’s success, the market is going to be huge, and there is still plenty of space for more players, and there are few better brands than both Jaguar and Land Rover nor many with a richer tradition of design and engineering excellence to draw upon.
If anyone can re-build the business, Sir James can – and it would be better for the UK than Apple buying it (which may well be one of the surprises of the coming year).
