A day after Coca-Cola announced plans to ax more than 1,200 corporate jobs, most of them at the Atlanta headquarters, outgoing CEO Muhtar Kent said the cuts were necessary to give the company “ammunition” for future growth.
“We don’t take decisions about job impacts lightly,” Kent said Wednesday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting at its World of Coke museum in downtown Atlanta.
“These changes are necessary so that we stay strong. So that we have enough ammunition” to invest in new brands, Kent said.
Coca-Cola President James Quincey, who succeeds Kent as CEO on May 1, announced the job cuts Tuesday during a conference call with investors to discuss quarterly earnings.
Coca-Cola expects to reap $800 million in annual savings from the job reduction and other cost-cutting measures.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Quincey told shareholders the company doesn’t need as many people on its corporate staff because it is almost finished with a years-long campaign to retool its relationship with bottling partners, and more of the responsibility will shift to management in local markets.
“We just need less controls at the center,” he said.
All of the company’s directors were re-elected and shareholders supported management’s proposals.
However, a non-binding “say on pay” vote on executive compensation got a relatively low approval of 75.5 percent – compared to more than 90 percent for the other proposals from management — after a proxy advisory firm criticized Coke’s executive pay.
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