Likely union: Cadbury has accepted a takeover offer from Kraft worth £11.7billion The decision by the board of Britain's last large-scale market chocolate maker Cadbury to run up the white flag - in the face of the greater financial muscle of American food giant Kraft - was all but inevitable.
Despite the shrill comments in defence of the company by descendants of the Quaker founders as well as the personal intervention of Peter Mandelson and the Prime Minister, in the end it was always the amount of money on the table which was going to determine the outcome.
The prospect of £12billion dangled before cash-starved shareholders in the wake of the recession was always going to be too tempting.
This does not make the Kraft-Cadbury deal any more palatable for the chocolate maker's workforce, the consumer and the future of manufacturing in Britain.
It would be easy to dismiss Cadbury as a frivolous company of no real relevance to Britain in the 21st Century.
But the reason Cadbury is such a powerful brand is that the UK is the largest per capita consumer of sweets and chocolates in the world. There is something fundamental in the culture of the company which chimes with Britain.
source: dailymail