Coca Cola buys Glaceau
According to Allhiphop.com, Coca Cola has purchased Glaceau, the creator of the highly successful Vitamin Water franchise for $4.1 billion dollars. 50 Cent, who owns 10% of the business, will earn over $400 million dollars from the transaction.
“This is an outstanding opportunity for both of our companies to build an expanded active lifestyle business, first in the United States and then around the world,” said Muhtar Kent, president and chief operating officer of The Coca-Cola Company. “Glacéau and its brands also provide us with highly attractive longer-term international opportunities. We look forward to discussing with Glacéau’s distributors and our bottling partners the best operating model for Glacéau’s routes-to-market.”
Glaceau will still maintain a majority of it’s management and 3 top executives, and will operate as a separate entity under Coca Cola’s Northern Division. This will give them the reach of the Coca Cola brand, which extends across the world.
“It’s a perfect match connecting the hottest active lifestyle brand with the full resources of the world’s best beverage company,” said J. Darius Bikoff, Glacéau founder and chief executive officer. “To best understand today’s announcement, you really need to go out, buy a bottle of Vitamin Water and try it for yourself to see how well it works.”
Completion of the transaction is expected for sometime in 2007, and will be under review by customer regulation.
50 pushes album back
In other 50 Cent news, he claims he will be pushing back his highly anticipated third album, “Curtis” from a June release date until September.
“I’m an international artist,” 50 Cent said. “My fans worldwide deserve to receive my album at the same time as my fans here in the US. Taking that into consideration moving the album to September was a necessary course of action.”
The official date for the new album release is slated for September 4th.
