Hershey Trust head's quandary: a kiss for Cadbury?

By Clare Baldwin

HERSHEY, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - To LeRoy Zimmerman, the taste of chocolate will always mean Hershey's.

But now the head of the charitable trust that controls the Hershey Company must contemplate a risk-everything deal that would tie its fate to the much larger British chocolatier Cadbury Plc (CBRY.L).

"I was born and raised in this area -- not in Hershey, but in Harrisburg -- and to me the taste of chocolate is Hershey's," said Zimmerman, who heads the eight-member Hershey Trust.

"I mean that. I've eaten in Europe all that stuff that's there. But the taste of chocolate is Hershey's to me and millions of Americans," said Zimmerman at the doorstep of his spacious home on a leafy suburban street outside Harrisburg.

Zimmerman is seen as one of the leading figures pushing for change at Hershey as it contemplates a $17 billion-plus (10 billion pound-plus) David-eats-Goliath bid for Cadbury. It would also stare down U.S. food group Kraft, which is in the midst of a hostile takeover campaign for Cadbury.

Zimmerman, now in his mid-70s, became Pennsylvania's first elected attorney general in 1980 and now serves as senior counsel at the law firm Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott. Known as a "power broker of central Pennsylvania."

Approached on two occasions this week, Zimmerman would not talk about the effort to orchestrate financing and political support for a deal that would require the 100-year-old Hershey to take on a company more than twice its size.

But it is clear that Zimmerman, whose firm keeps two large jars of Hershey kisses in its lobby, may risk taking on an ambitious deal that could change the identity of Hershey. Doing nothing could allow Kraft to create the world's largest confectioner with Cadbury, ahead of current No. 1 Mars-Wrigley.