Tomorrow the City Takoever Panel's 'put up or shut up' deadline expires at 5pm and if Kraft doesn't bid it will have to wait another six months to get the chance again. Analysts suggest that Kraft is deciding whether to formally table its existing cash-and-stock offer, which was previously worth £10.2bn (745 pence a share), or to up the bid in an effort to win over shareholders.

The original cash-and-stock offer by Kraft has actually declined in value because of a drop in the value of Kraft's shares (caused by poor results) and exchange rate movement. Kraft's original bid was for 300p in cash and 0.2589 new Kraft shares for each Cadbury share, so the offer is now worth just 720p.

Cadbury has - rightly - said that the original Kraft offer "fundamentally undervalued" the firm and that it would prefer to remain independent. Cadbury chairman Roger Carr stated in a letter to Kraft chief executive Irene Rosenfeld that Cadbury being "absorbed into Kraft's low growth, conglomerate business model" was an "unappealing prospect".

GM said in a statement that its board had made the decision in light of "an improving business environment for GM over the past few months". Earlier this year GM had agreed to sell Opel and Vauxhall to Canadian car parts firm Magna.

Part of the GM board was always against the plan and the deal had been effectively rammed down the throat of GM by the German government which had offered €4.5bn (that's around £4bn) of loans to support a Magna bid, hoping that this would minimise job losses in Germany. GM probably wanted a deal with RHJ, the Belgian based firm, but German cash wasn't on offer for that - probably in breach of EU state aid rules.

But GM was always unhappy about sharing technology and brands with Magna, fearing that Opel might compete with the GM brand Chevrolet which is doing well in Russia, and that it could lose control of key technology that Opel is developing. The latter is critical to GM's need to develop smaller, energy efficient cars, especially as it is under pressure from the Obama administration to cut emissions.

In other words, GM Europe has turned out to be of critical importance to GM after all. In addition GM now thinks it can afford to keep its European operations given that it has emerged from Chapter 11 leaner and fitter and given that the business environment is picking up.

This throws up a whole load of questions about GM Europe's future. For example, in the short term a €1.5 billion bridge loan expires at the end of this month which GM will have to re-finance.

GM stated yesterday that it would now "initiate a restructuring of its European operations in earnest" and seek aid from the German government, and other European states. This risks degenerating into the US based transnational playing off governments in a divide-and-rule game to maximise the subsidies it gets.

The process of GM-downsizing (and indeed auto industry downsizing more generally) in Europe now needs to be effectively overseen by the European Commission to stop such wasteful subsidy competition and to avoid a repeat of the situation where Germany tried to trump everyone else by offering huge sums.

In Britain's case, the union Unite and the British government had already done most of the work in brokering a deal with Magna to safeguard as many jobs as possible in the UK. In return for a two-year pay freeze Magna had promised no compulsory redundancies and some 600 job cuts - well down on what was initially expected.

Lord Mandelson had also indicated a desire to support Vauxhall operations in the UK with financial aid if needed. Both will now need to repeat this work with GM, but as one commentator noted, "better the devil you know".

My first preference was always to keep Vauxhall part of GM to keep access to key new electric vehicle technology coming from the US and to share platform costs across different brands. The British government was slow off the mark in recognizing this but now has a chance to safeguard Vauxhall's position.

There is a deal to be done here - GM should ultimately be able to recognise the efficiency of Vauxhall's operations in the UK if they are effectively backed by unions and the British government. There is also a real chance of bringing electric car production - in the form of the European version of the Chevy Volt - to the UK.

Things actually look brighter for Vauxhall after this decision, if unions and the governments can strike a deal with GM. There is every chance they can do so.

Professor David Bailey works at Coventry University Business School.

GM said in a statement that its board had made the decision in light of "an improving business environment for GM over the past few months". Earlier this year GM had agreed to sell Opel and Vauxhall to Canadian car parts firm Magna.

Part of the GM board was always against the Magna plan and the deal had been effectively rammed down the throat of GM by the German government which had offered €4.5bn (that's around £4bn) of loans to support a Magna bid, hoping that this would minimise job losses in Germany. GM probably wanted a deal with RHJ, the Belgian based firm, but German cash wasn't on offer for that - probably in breach of EU state aid rules.

But GM was always unhappy about sharing technology and brands with Magna, fearing that Opel might compete with the GM brand Chevrolet which is doing well in Russia, and that it could lose control of key technology that Opel is developing. The latter is critical to GM's need to develop smaller, energy efficient cars, especially as it is under pressure from the Obama administration to cut emissions.

GM said in a statement that its board had made the decision in light of "an improving business environment for GM over the past few months". Earlier this year GM had agreed to sell Opel and Vauxhall to Canadian car parts firm Magna.

Part of the GM board was always against the Magna plan and the deal had been effectively rammed down the throat of GM by the German government which had offered €4.5bn (that's around £4bn) of loans to support a Magna bid, hoping that this would minimise job losses in Germany. GM probably wanted a deal with RHJ, the Belgian based firm, but German cash wasn't on offer for that - probably in breach of EU state aid rules.

But GM was always unhappy about sharing technology and brands with Magna, fearing that Opel might compete with the GM brand Chevrolet which is doing well in Russia, and that it could lose control of key technology that Opel is developing. The latter is critical to GM's need to develop smaller, energy efficient cars, especially as it is under pressure from the Obama administration to cut emissions.

Another day, another near £40 billion of tax-payers' money to prop up the banks, with another £13 billion of government borrowing to finance the bail out. Government borrwing costs may rise as a result and the deficit may widen yet further.

The sums announced yesterday were staggering and eye-watering, especially when you talk to SMEs - notably in maunfacturing - about what support they get from said banks. A shake of the head, a wry smile and a raised eyebrow is perhaps the most polite form of reply we receive from MDs in factories across the Midlands.

Quite why we couldn't have used the crisis to re-engineer the system so that an industrial bank makes proper long-term funding available to British business is a huge missed opportunity.

Instead, as Robert Peston noted dryly in his blog, the Treasury has itself become perhaps the biggest hedge fund in the world, betting that both banks' share prices will go up and also that the massive commercial property portfolios which form most of RBS's dodgy asset base will go up in value rather than plummet in a second property bubble burst.

The board itself was created after the firm left Chapter 11 bankruptcy back in July, and will be asked by GM's management team to OK a letter drafted to address concerns raised by the European Commission over the sale of a 55% stake to Magna.

So far the board has - reluctantly at times it seems - backed management's decision to sell to Magna; the question is will it continue to do so?

Probably, is the answer, although the board may yet pull a rabbit out of the hat and either keep the firm or find another buyer. That's unlikely, though, for a number of reasons, not least being the fact that GM probably can't afford to keep Opel.

So, it seems that Lloyds, RBS and Northern Rock will be broken up and parts of them will be sold to new entrants to the banking sector. Remember that the government now holds a 70% stake in RBS and a 43% stake in Lloyds after last October's 'Great Banking Bail-Out' (or GBO - not so much GBH but rather a smash-and-grab by the banks themselves).

This is in effect Brussels' sanction for the break-up of Northern Rock into a "good" and "bad" bank, and could lead to three new players emerging in the UK. Indeed, Chancellor Alistair Darling said yesterday that there could be new players on the High Street when "the time is right", so that taxpayers get their money back.

Banks' assets will only be sold to new entrants to the UK banking market and not to existing financial institutions, in order to ensure "proper competition and choice".

The chancellor also said that the government will split up Northern Rock into two parts by the end of the year, and will aim to sell off one part within the next three to four years.

This is all very well, but the 'plan' risks being a missed opportunity both to do something more radical in breaking up the utility function of banks from their casino capitalism arms which caused the financial mayhem in the first place, and indeed in terms of giving customers real choice.

News that the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF) will release some €15 million in November to assist laid-off Dell workers in Ireland is welcome news for the workers who will potentially benefit (I'm still scratching my head as to why we haven't bid for this money here in the UK - see an earlier blog here).

With unemployment rising rapidly in Ireland, prospects for such workers look bleak. Recent estimates suggest that Irish unemployment could be heading towards 14-15%, with it peaking in the Mid West region as high as 20%.

In fact the Mid West - like our region the West Midlands - has been especially hard hit: both regions are suffering rapidly rising unemployment as manufacturing has been hard hit by the downturn.

But before Ireland forks out up to €23 million (including the EGF money) on responding to the Dell shock, perhaps policy makers could pause for a moment to see how neighbours like the West Midlands have responded in similar situations.

Kraft has been waiting for this Wednesday's figures to see what to do next. It might not reveal its hand straight away, but may well wait until after its own trading update on November 3; that would give the US giant a few days to put in a formal offer before the Takeover Panel's deadline of November 9.

Last week a JP Morgan research note suggested that Cadbury's sales were below the company's target of 4-6 % revenue growth. We'll see. As the Daily Telegraph reports here, Cadbury has a long tradition of exceeding expectations when it announces its results. The JP Morgan note may actually turn out to quite useful for the firm, lowering City expectations ahead of the trading figures.

His argument has been that when you factor in those who have left the labour market for incapacity benefits and those not eligible for benefits at all then the 'real' level of unemployment is much higher than even the OECD's Labour Force Survey (LFS) measure suggests.

He's right, as a fascinating yet depressing report by Professor Steve Fothergill for the Industrial Communities Alliance has just highlighted. Fothergill is a highly respected expert at Sheffield Hallam University and has written extensively on closures and unemployment. His work helped shape the scope of our recent MG Rover study which looked what happened to ex-Rover workers three years after closure.

According to Fothergill, the real level of unemployment is now around 3.4 million; that's more than double the official claimant count of 1.6 million and higher than the latest LFS figure of 2.47 million. The 'real' jobless calculation of 3.4 million in his study was arrived at by taking the 1.6 million on the official claimant count and adding 900,000 people classified as jobless under the government's alternative unemployment measure and a similar number of people hidden on incapacity benefits.

Let's be clear. In effect, this is a sad day for the region. Jobs, capacity and potentially R&D will be lost forever. Yet again a major local producer has gone under and will be shifted east.

This, along with the tentative deal by the union Unite to cut costs and save jobs in the UK, ups the pressure on the UK government to reach - quickly - a deal on financial support for Vauxhall operations in the UK.

GM Chief Exec 'Fritz' Henderson said yesterday that it is "quite possible" that GM will finalise the sale this week.

The overall deal is expected to be done by the end of November. It adds up to some €5 billion, including around €4.5 billion in state financing, with Magna and Sberbank providing €500 million in equity.

Under the scheme, people trading in a banger at least ten years old get £2000 off the price of a new car, with £1000 coming from the government and £1000 from the industry.

The £300 million - which was enough for 300,000 cars under the scheme - has been used up so quickly that it will run out next month, at around the time that the VAT rate rises again.

Car manufacturers face a double whammy of end-of-scrappage and a VAT rise.

So, it was very good news that Lord Mandelson today announced that the scheme will be extended with another £100 million. This helps a fragile industry avoid a hard landing. This has already been done in France and Germany, where scrappage schemes have been extended.

Never mind the potential wider economic and social damage. If you want to see a vivid example of the City's 'socially useless' activity Lord Turner highlighted in the summer, this is it. For takeovers nearly always don't work, yet firms waste billions on them, urged on by City bankers who make a killing in fees.

Despite being weighed down by some $18 billion of debt, Kraft has lined up Citigroup, Deutsche and Lazard to help them finance a takeover. Never mind that Kraft, the second biggest food and drink firm in the world, risks losing its investment grade credit rating if it over-borrows to get its hands on Cadbury.

City rumours suggest that Kraft is set to launch a hostile bid for the Bournville-based confectionery firm, valuing it at around £11bn. The City's takeover panel is likely this week to give the Illinois-based group a deadline to put up or shut up. Game on.

It makes sense of course for JLR to concentrate production at one site in Birmingham thereby saving money and offering greater flexibility.

As I've been saying for several years now, JLR simply can't keep open 3 plants in the UK on current volumes or even if output gets back to its peak of around 300,000 a year.

And despite much speculation over Halewood's future since the announcement that the X type was being dropped (again no surprise despite being a good car), new LRX 'baby Range Rover' production guarantees Halewood's medium term survival. In essence, Halewood carries on because of its size; at full capacity it is a very efficient plant.

My initial reading of the JLR announcement yesterday was that overall employment levels would be maintained with jobs shifting to Halewood but being lost here in Birmingham. To be fair to JLR management, that isn't the intention.