• Wall Street Journal, Ad Age, Business Week, Wednesday, September 9, 2009 10:42 AM

Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld told investors on a conference call yesterday that Cadbury has "limited opportunity" to create value for shareholders on its own, ratcheting up the one-sided war of words in what analysts think will be a prolonged takeover battle, Dana Cimilluca, Jeffrey McCracken and Anjali Cordeiro report. Meanwhile, Kraft management is convinced that neither Nestle nor Hershey will get involved in a biding war, they write.

A Cadbury source says that "there is almost unanimous support for the board's rejection of the offer," and that it has no further plans to respond to it.

Emily Bryson York reports that, on paper, a takeover would create $2.7 billion global advertiser and Ad Age estimates that the two companies would spend about $1.5 billion in the U.S. alone in both measured and unmeasured channels.

Meanwhile, as if your sugar craving isn't already peaking thanks to all this coverage, Business Week has put up a slide show of "The World's Best-Selling Candies" by country. No. 1 across the globe? M&Ms. I'll take mine with peanuts.

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