The reaction to Kraft's imminent takeover of Cadbury continues to rumble along with the latest news being an announcement from US chocolate maker Hershey that they won't be making a rival bid to the £11.9 billion offer already on the table.

Considering that Hershey were only ever a side-bet on having any involvement, it's strange they even felt it necessary to say anything at all. But it does give you an idea on the backroom machinations that are still going like the clappers in a bid to scupper Kraft's deal.

Everyone has had a say on this most controversial of hostile takeovers, from the Government trying to get Kraft to guarantee jobs to the Dairylea-makers key shareholder Warren Buffet expressing his reservations about the whole deal.

Though it's really down to the shareholders and that offer of 840p a share is mighty tempting.




New bank warning

Virgin Money and Tesco take note. It seems though we all hate the banks, when thinking of switching to a different current account, fewer than one in ten of us would look to a supermarket or online bank as a serious alternative.

The real winners in the great current account switcheroo are those high street banks which have not been bailed out by the Government and the building societies, according to the figures from PricewaterhouseCoopers. They say that 10% of bank customers have switched during the financial crisis but it's not the new kids on the block who are tempting them away, it's the names they know already that they think they can trust.

Seems the pain that banks like Barclays endured during the worst of the meltdown may have been worth it after all.

Easyjet passenger numbers take off

Budget airline Easyjet's strategy of moving into Europe is paying off remarkably well with more than half (54%) of its passengers originating from non-UK airports in the last quarter of 2009, up by 20% on the previous three months. Not bad, not bad at all.

But god knows what the passengers make of London Luton airport when they jet in from Paris, Milan and Madrid only to find they're 70 miles away from the capital. At least it's not as bad as some Ryanair destinations, like Frankfurt (Hahn) where I found myself some years back. Arriving at this former military base with a Quonset hut for a terminal, it took more than two hours by bus to reach Frankfurt city centre in middle of the night.

That wasn't a great trip.