Coca-Cola's Management Shakeup: Bringing 'A Knife To A Gun Fight?'

August 16, 2015

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Coca-Cola's Management Shakeup: Bringing 'A Knife To A Gun Fight?'

Beverage giant The Coca-Cola Co (NYSE: KO) announced last Thursday that James Quincey will be the new president and chief operating officer of the company. Coca-Cola also announced Ahmet Bozer, who was earlier considered by the Street as the successor to CEO Muhtar Kent, will be retiring, although he will stay on as an adviser with the company until March 2016.

Peter Andersen, Congress Asset Management, was on CNBC following the announcement to discuss this management shakeup at Coca-Cola.

Extrapolating Coke's Move

"Such a deeply researched company as Coca Cola, any insight we can get that's out of the blue is a pretty good thing to use," Andersen began. "So, I do think it gives us a little bit of hint as to what's going on in the boardroom and what kind of strategic decisions they are making. So, I think, it's a good thing on average."

He continued, "One of the things that we are looking at is of course his background, Mr. Quincey's background is in the international arena and in deal making. So, if we want to extrapolate why Coke is doing this, it's pretty obvious, right? That they are probably going to be looking for international growth in perhaps on the M&A side."

The Beginning Of Significant Change

Andersen highlighted how this management shakeup doesn't changes much for the company, saying, "The changes that have been announced today, it's almost like bringing, say, a knife to a gun fight – in the sense that the challenges that Coke and its competitors have are so large that I am not sure that just this one change would be enough. I do think— I am hopeful that this might be the beginning of a significant change at the higher level."

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