November 25, 2009 2:12 PM

Report: Hershey Getting In on Cadbury Fun

Posted by Zach Lowe

We're about to go engorge ourselves on our Mom's best treats for Thanksgiving, so it's fitting we bring you this quick update before we hit the road: Hershey is apparently quite serious about bidding for the U.K. chocolate company Cadbury, as the charitable trust that oversees the Pennsylvania-based candy giant has asked the state's attorney general to bless a possible Cadbury bid, according to this report in The Wall Street Journal.

As we've reported before, Cadbury suddenly finds itself at the center of an increasingly hostile battle. Kraft, advised by Clifford Chance in the U.K. and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in the U.S., has submitted a hostile $16.5 billion bid for Cadbury after the British company rejected a nearly identical offer earlier this month. Slaughter and May is advising Cadbury. 

Pennsylvania authorities have broad power over charitable trusts under a law enacted after an aborted deal that would have seen Hershey sell itself to the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. in 2002, the WSJ says. The charitable trust has about 80 percent of the voting rights in the company, and it must obtain the Pennsylvania attorney general's permission to make any deal that would threaten the trust's control of Hershey, the WSJ says. The trust can challenge any rejection in court. Attorney General Tom Corbett, a Republican, has not yet made up his mind, the WSJ says.

Hershey is about half the size of Cadbury and one-fifth the size of Kraft, the WSJ says.

We reached out to Sullivan & Cromwell partners James Morphy and Audra Cohen, who have been Hershey's go-to deal partners in the past, but we haven't heard back from them.

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