Business Negotiation Classics: One Case a Day

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One business school textbook negotiation case per day (IBM breakup, Apple antitrust, Twitter acquisition), with decision points and reusable lessons

Business Negotiation Classics: One Case a Day2026/06/04 21:28:50

The chocolate war: how Kraft broke every rule — and still won

In August 2009, Kraft Foods CEO Irene Rosenfeld flew to London, made a 20-minute pitch to Cadbury chairman Roger Carr, and was rejected. What followed was 17 months of hostile bid mechanics, phantom white knights, parliamentary spectacle, and a single broken factory pledge that rewrote British takeover law. Kraft paid £11.9 billion — £1.7 billion more than its opening ask — for a deal its largest shareholder publicly condemned, yet the case's lasting lesson isn't about the price: it's about how an arb-heavy shareholder register made the board's defense narratively brilliant and structurally irrelevant, and how an eight-word sentence about a Bristol chocolate factory triggered the most comprehensive reform of the UK Takeover Code in a generation.

Business Negotiation Classics: One Case a Day2026/06/03 21:34:21

How Ted Turner lost control by building too well

In 1995, Ted Turner agreed to sell his cable empire to Time Warner for $7.5 billion — not because he was outmaneuvered, but because the governance structure he built to protect himself had eliminated every other strategic option. The case traces Turner's decade of blocked moves (CBS, NBC), John Malone's kingmaker premium, Levin's five-week Montana-to-Manhattan close, the FTC's contested 3–2 consent decree, and why Turner called it the biggest mistake of his life.

Business Negotiation Classics: One Case a Day2026/06/02 21:38:44

How France turned a hostile takeover into a national champion

On January 26, 2004, Sanofi-Synthélabo CEO Jean-François Dehecq launched the first hostile takeover in pharmaceutical history — a €48.5 billion bid for Aventis, a company twice his size. What followed was 90 days of poison pills, a Swiss white knight, two French finance ministers, and a government-orchestrated deal at €55.3 billion that created the world's third-largest pharma company.

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