Word: stocked
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Unlike most companies, particularly foodmaker Kraft, which is also considering a bid for Cadbury, Hershey is controlled not by investors but by a charitable trust, established a century ago by company founder Milton Hershey to fund the education of orphans. The Hershey Trust, which holds 80% of the voting stock of the candy company, runs the Milton Hershey School not far from the corporate headquarters in central Pennsylvania, and it is required to maintain it in perpetuity. (See which businesses are bucking the recession...
...Neither the company nor the trust will talk specifically about the possibility of a bid for Cadbury, a decision that appears imminent, but they acknowledge that the needs of the school put the business decisions of the company in an unusual context. Dividends from the candy-company stock provide about 44% of the funding for the school...
...school now has assets worth more than $6 billion, but the prize of its collection is the huge bloc of stock in the Hershey company...
...Several of the historic food companies in the U.S., including Kellogg's and Campbell's Soup, have associated charitable trusts that own some stock, but none come close to rivaling Hershey in terms of the close financial entanglement of the company and the founder's philanthropic foundation...
...After a series of bad years for Hershey, however, the trust board briefly toyed in 2007 with the idea of selling its stock to Wrigley, famous for its chewing-gum brand, but backed down within hours of closing the deal. State and federal authorities had tried to block the sale, in part because of concerns about the size of a combined Wrigley-Hershey company. Residents of the town of Hershey, meanwhile, expressed outrage and even convinced a local judge to delay the sale, saying it would cause "irreparable harm" to the community...