Blog Archives

Obituary – Interesting history of Rowntree the chocolate manufacturers Ken Dixon obituary Pragmatic chairman of Rowntree who was unable to prevent the York-based confectioner being swallowed up by Nestlé Dixon when he was chairman in 1988, a tumultuous year for Rowntree Ken Dixon snapped a stick off his daily two-bar KitKat and answered the phone. By the end of the call he might have felt he needed something stronger than coffee to go with it. It was 8.30am on April 13, 1988, and the stock exchange had spotted unusual activity in the shares of Rowntree & Co, the venerable York-based confectionery company of which he was chairman. Representatives of Jacobs Suchard, the Swiss manufacturer of Toblerone chocolate bars, had been calling Rowntree’s institutional shareholders and offering a 30 per cent premium if they sold immediately. Dixon later discovered that they had been quietly acquiring Rowntree stock since mid-March, but neither ...