Coke Is It, It = 3,500 Lost Jobs

From the Atlanta Business Chronicle: Coke Enterprises posts $1.1B loss, job cuts coming

“results for 2006 include a $2.9 billion non-cash impairment charge, restructuring charges, expenses related to expensing of stock options and net favorable tax items.”

There seems to be two common threads among quite a few of the current slew of restructuring announcements being released. After four years of strong growth companies have gone on a buying and expansion spree, part of the growing pains is the accumulation of some hefty costs and charges. And when these “charges” do hit the books, resulting in poor quarterly financial performance for the company, they can pull a restructuring plan out and site job cuts as the answer. That’s the easy way of saying they’re on top of things.

Last years explosion of ethanol plants has pushed the cost of corn up 50%, that along with a significant rise in the price of aluminum will result in a 9% increase to the cost of producing a case of Coke.

Since inflation has hit Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. along with other bottlers and the employees must pay. I can only imagine how many jobs it will take to cover the “expenses related to expensing of stock options” .