Investors will vote today on whether to sell the Australian bottler Coca-Cola Amatil to Coke’s European offshoot for $9.8 billion.
The Australian company began over a century ago by selling cigarettes and now controls Coca-Cola’s production and distribution for all of Australia. The company also owns the rights to distribution in Indonesia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and New Zealand, as well as other Australian-only brands.
Investment banker David Williams says the move is part of a larger trend of the internationalisation of business.