On 13 April 1988, the Swiss confectioner Jacobs Suchard began a dawn raid on Rowntree's shares, which had been under-performing the market, although they were beginning to improve, taking a 14.9% stake in the company by 9:15 am. As a result, the managing director of Nestlé, Helmut Maucher, contacted Kenneth Dixon, the chairman of Rowntree, offering to act as a white knight. Nestlé was the largest food company in the world, and had been interested in Rowntree previously, but the Rowntree board would aggressively contest any attempted takeover, and Nestlé had never undertaken a hostile takeover before. However, Nestlé was worried about the potential of Rowntree falling into the hands of one of its major competitors. Rowntree was the fourth-largest chocolate manufacturer in the world, after Mars, Hershey, and Cadbury, with a 7% global market share.
