Coca Cola

The merger with JTL, which operates Coca Cola bottling companies in the West, will form the largest independent soft-drink bottler in the world. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The new company will operate in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Michigan, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Coca-Cola will own a majority of the equity in the company, but John T. Lumpton of Chattanooga, Tenn.

Coca-Cola Co., struggling to improve the diversity of its corporate culture amid accusations of discriminating against minorities, said it plans to extend health-care benefits to same-sex domestic partners of its U.S.-based employees. Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, the world's largest soft-drink company, said the policy will take effect Jan. 1.

A pharmacist has uncovered what is believed to be the first sign advertising Coca-Cola, one which set the stage for one of the most successful advertising efforts in the country, historians said. Dean Cox, owner of Young Brothers Pharmacy in Cartersville, said the 95-year-old Coca-Cola logo painted on the side of his century-old building was uncovered by restoration experts who chipped off 25 layers of paint. Old timers had told him the sign was there and a photo in an old hometown newspaper confirmed its existence.

Coca-Cola Co. said its fourth-quarter profit fell 18% as it felt the effect of the stronger dollar and took several write-downs, but the world's largest soft drink maker sold more of its products around the world. The results, including a 4% increase in worldwide case volume, beat Wall Street estimates, and Coca-Cola's shares rose $3.12 to $44.39. The Atlanta seller of Sprite, Fanta, VitaminWater, Minute Maid orange juice and Nestea also plans to accelerate spending cuts and said it would save $500 million a year by 2011.

Space shuttle astronauts will soon carry Coca-Cola into orbit for the first time thanks to a new high-tech "space can" that cost the soft-drink company more than $250,000 to develop, company officials said. The new can is the first container capable of dispensing carbonated beverages in the weightlessness of space, they added. Liquids now taken into space are non-carbonated and are carried in small plastic serving pouches and sipped through straws.

The first change in Coca-Cola's 99-year-old secret recipe is being ballyhooed with a media blitz of major cities that links Coke with milestones of U.S. history and major personalities and events in American culture. Coke is not alone, but its campaign is one of the biggest in the new swing of advertising toward patriotism--a trend that some advertising analysts believe cheapens and saps loftier virtues.

The State Department expressed disappointment today in the decision of the Coca-Cola Co. to sell its interests in South African companies. "The Administration is obviously disappointed although the U.S. recognizes that it is Coca-Cola's private decision to make," department spokesman Bernard Kalb said. "The U.S. has consistently maintained that American private businesses such as Coca-Cola have been effective proponents of positive change in South Africa."

Billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett said today he plans to seek government approval to boost his holdings in Coca-Cola Co. from almost 7% to 15%. The news sent Coke stock sharply higher and the share price rose $1.50 to $65 by midday in active New York Stock Exchange trading. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. investment company said it intends to seek to buy as much as 15% of the soft drink and entertainment company's voting shares.

In the largest racial discrimination settlement in U.S. history, Coca-Cola Co. agreed Thursday to pay $192.5 million to settle allegations that it routinely discriminated against black employees in pay, promotions and performance evaluations. The soft drink giant will pay an average of $40,000 to some 2,200 current and former black employees who sued in federal court last year.

One of E. Neville Isdell's goals when the former Coca-Cola Co. manager returned as chief executive in 2004 was to perk up U.S. sales by selling more water and sports drinks, as PepsiCo was doing to propel growth. This year he introduced more than two dozen noncarbonated drinks, including flavored Dasani water and a grape version of Powerade, a rival to PepsiCo's Gatorade. Coca-Cola's sales volume of non-soda beverages rose 7% in the second quarter. PepsiCo's jumped 23%.