Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Coca-Cola is to buy the Costa coffee chain for £3.9bn, after owner Whitbread demerged it earlier this year.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45365893

Is there anything British left..:rolleyes:

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa chain
 

There's me i'm British ;)

Not a fan of overpriced coffee outlets whoever owns them .

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa chain
 

Never been to a coffee outlet so not bothered. There are plenty of side street cafe's with delicious coffee.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa chain
 

Indeed. Why pay a fortune to waltz down the street with an adult Tomee Tipee mug?

Probably about to become even more overpriced.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa chain
 

Or you can use one of those coffee makers at home which has so many flavours to choose from and its much cheaper.:)

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Am not surprised. They have gone from a small UK only coffee company in mid 90s to now a global phenomenon.

I would say better than Starbucks.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Bring back the Lyons tea rooms...I say.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Give me a Tetley Black & 2 sugars anyday.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Even the famous Tetley Tea isn't British anymore. . .

Tetley is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Indian multinational corporation Tata Global Beverages (formerly Tata Tea), the second largest manufacturer of tea in the world after Unilever


It's an incredible experience when you look into who now owns many of those famous brands from yesteryear :shocked:

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

These are just a few of the iconic brands now owned by foreign companies.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/comp...fpa3h#image=34

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

As an American, the purchase of Anheuser-Busch by InBev was like a dagger through my heart. That doesn't mean that I was enamored with their product. Budweiser was (is) a second rate (and that's being generous) product. However, they were an American institution and I took their acquisition by a foreign entity personally.

Some of you may have heard of Chock full 'o nuts coffee. Who in their right mind would want nuts in their coffee? NOBODY! Yet, as a wholly American institution, I appreciate the fact that they remained faithful to the nation. Budweiser, no matter how American they might be, could not muster the intestinal fortitude to maintain that relationship. Damn them to hell!

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

When I said that the weakened £ would result in good British companies being acquired by overseas companies people called it Project Fear. We've now seen our largest tech company ARM sold to the Japanese and our most successful coffee retailer sold to the Americans. So fewer dividends and tax receipts flowing to the UK in the future.
This is what taking back control looks like...for the Japanese and Americans!

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

I don't buy brand names. I tend to look for own brands where possible or lesser known brands.Mind that's mainly down to cost.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Not getting involved in the words Project fear as that is just invented hyperbole but it extremely disappointing and sad that yet more big companies are allowed to be swallowed up willy nilly by foreign companies with HMG doing diddly squat about it as if it was the Americans , Chinese ,French and Germans governments it would be a different kettle of fish one would imagine.

Yes taking back control Andrew but there certainly won't be many companies the British control sadly.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Losing control Den as the evidence shows.
The Government does have something in mind to tackle the situation but I think it's rather wishy-washy. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44932704

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

No tea is British, even Yorkshire tea. The Selby tea fields are apparently a myth ;)

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

oh stop it Andrew, this sort of thing has been happening for decades . . . and well you know it. You seem to stop at nothing if it gives you the chance for a Brexit blast :nono:

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Another one of those political wheezes where they say a lot and then 5 years down the road nothing has come of it..

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

I fear this is an uncomfortable truth to have generated such a reaction. ;)

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

You are talking complete nonsense, large companies have been buying up smaller ones for as long as businesses have existed, just look at Cadbury for a UK example.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Nope. My suggestion was that it makes it cheaper and therefore more likely to happen. Not that it has never happened in the past which of course it has.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Talking nonsense. Takeovers and buyouts of companies, British or otherwise have been happening for decades. It has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit or a weak £.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

You seem to have ignored Andrew's last post. A weak pound does make more takeovers by overseas companies likely. One of the many negative Brexit dividends coming our way. Project Reality will be costly lesson.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

My original post could have been better.
British companies have been acquired in the past by overseas companies (and vice versa) but to see two large companies acquired in this time frame (Costa £3.9bn, Arm Holdings £24.3bn) is a significant shift.
Mr K has covered how a weak £ makes UK companies more attractive takeover targets.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Its not a significant shift Andrew as for many decades it has been happening as my point is would the countries mentioned in a previous post by me let it happen to their major companies and the answer is no.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Seems every thread keeps being dragged back to Brexit. Very tedious.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

It's significant in terms of the size of the companies and time period.

China is definitely pretty closed but it's an emerging country so you would expect it to be more closed than the UK.

France is becoming more liberal and the country recently agreed for Alstom to be acquired by GE and Siemens. Lots of famous companies in France are foreign-owned including Renault Trucks (Volvo Trucks of Sweden), Waterman Pens (Newell of USA) and Ciroc Vodka (Diageo of the UK).
Germany has been fairly liberal but after the Chinese started to acquire companies, it has tightened up on non-EU acquirers. https://www.dentons.com/en/insights/...outside-the-eu

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Cadbury was bought a few years back and that had nothing to do with Brexit or a week £.

Costa would have been bought no matter what. Whitbread had been looking to either spin off as a separate entity or sell it for a while now to focus on Premier Inn.

Also the Chinese have been buying international companies for years.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Do you have evidence to back this up, or is this just made up guesswork ?


There is no evidence of 'brexit' or a 'weak pound' being invloved here, just business dealings ;

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

No one is arguing about why Cadbury was acquired or saying that British companies have never been acquired by overseas companies before, it's the fact that two large acquisitions (>£1bn) have come in a short period of time. I agree that the Chinese have been buying overseas companies - they own Volvo Cars, London Taxis and Motorola phones to name a few brands but it's one-way traffic.

The plan was to float Costa Coffee on the London Stock Exchange and not sell it so it would have remained British. The weakened £ following the Brexit vote ($1.45 before the vote, versus $1.30 today) contributed to it being a cheaper potential acquisition for overseas acquirers like Coca-Cola and hence made this outcome more likely.

---------- Post added at 17:22 ---------- Previous post was at 17:20 ----------

There is an English tea plantation in Sunny Cornwall! :)
https://tregothnan.co.uk

---------- Post added at 17:27 ---------- Previous post was at 17:22 ----------

I'm sorry that you get that impression but if I believe it is connected, I think it's best that I say so and let people discuss the hypothesis.
Having said that, I think this is the only recent thread I think in which the B-word has been raised. :)

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

The fact that Coca Cola bought Costa and the £ being weak is just pure coincidence.

I think you are looking too heavily into the situation.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Interesting ! I will be in Cornwall later this month so will check that out. :)

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Investors as a rule don’t like conglomerates. They make it harder to choose what business to put your cash into. On the surface there’s an obvious similarity between the various facets of Whitbread’s business but in investment terms a chain of coffee shops is light years away from a budget hotel. If the aim is to maximise the value of money invested then the activist investors are probably right, the two businesses standing apart would most likely have been worth more than the two combined.

Having said all that, Costa has now been swallowed up by a true global giant which for all its size has until now been really just a manufacturer of sugary drinks. A chain of coffee shops doesn’t really sit well with that. I suspect what they’re really after is just the brand name, in order to facilitate their entry into the coffee market, and those shops that aren’t already held by franchisees will get sold off.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Costa-Cola or Coca-Costa, I know the name won't change...anyway I dislike both products.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

It's been happening for years Andrew. It's what's known as globalisation.
Makes you wonder how these companies are going to be able to operate in the UK if a no deal Brexit.

In 1963 about 7% of UK companies were foreign owned, by 1998 that had risen to about 31%, 2010 41%. I think there may be a trend here.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Yes, there's probably a trend but two acquisitions of large UK companies close to one another is another trend too. Time will tell.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

Ownership of companies is irrelevant as long as they pay the correct taxes and employ British people.

If you buy a British company and then offshore it, then obviously that causes issues.

That said many British companies, owned and built up by British owners have offshored themselves( Brexiteer Dyson is a perfect example), well the manufacturering if not the R&D.

Virgin Media and other telcos, electricity, gas, water companies, for example, does it really matter who owns them? As long as they invest in their companies?

Virgin Media has been a US owned company since it was formed, they employ thousands and are currently investing billions in infrastructure that will benefit the country.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

The counter argument is that it does matter as future dividends will flow out of the country and investment decisions taken by foreign owners can disadvantage the UK. As Pip has pointed out, Heineken relocated production of Newcastle Brown to Heineken's home country of the Netherlands!

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

So Newky brown isn't Newky anymore. Taking the heart out of Newcastle.

Re: Coca-Cola to buy Costa Coffee for £3.9bn
 

The ARM Holdings deal was announced just a month after the Brexit vote. That deal would have been in negotiation many months before the referendom was even mooted so to link it to the Brexit vote and the subsequent drop on the value of Sterling is fanciful at best.

The company, being a holdings, is actually a multinational conglomerate. Only the HQ is in the UK.

The company was owned by Softbank Group a Japanese based company so sale to another Japanese company wouldn't be that unusual. So not even a UK company but hey let's not let facts spoil your assertion.;)