Word: absoluteness
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...recent breakfast in his private dining room overlooking the Eiffel Tower, he was strictly a coffee man, despite having just pulled off a deal worth celebrating with something stronger. In March, Pernod Ricard stunned its rivals by landing one of the biggest prizes in the drinks sector: Absolut, the world's leading premium vodka, whose acquisition, Ricard concedes, was "a bit of a coup...
...everyone agreed. As Ricard buttered his toast, the markets battered his firm for paying $8.34 billion for Absolut's parent company, Vin & Sprit--which was almost 21 times the Swedish firm's gross operating profit last year. As if to suggest that Pernod Ricard had overreached, Bruce Carbonari, CEO of Fortune Brands (which was trumped in the Absolut auction), claimed that the price for V&S would not provide an "appropriate return" for shareholders. Yet le patron remained unperturbed. Three years ago, the company leveraged itself heavily to acquire Britain's Allied Domecq, a $13 billion deal that doubled Pernod...
...billion gal. (4.6 billion liters) consumed annually, but the rest of the world is catching up fast, and global growth prospects are huge, especially for so-called premium vodkas. "There was no way that an ambitious company like Pernod Ricard could pass up an opportunity to acquire Absolut, even though it has cost them dear," says senior drinks company analyst Jeremy Cunnington of Euromonitor International...
Pernod Ricard paid top dollar for Absolut because it believes its marketing muscle can increase sales from last year's 10.7 million cases. But the economics of producing vodka surely played a part in its calculations. Whisky and brandy spend years maturing in wooden casks before they can be sold, tying up cash in inventory, but vodka is practically an instant money machine. The chemistry is simple: ferment grain or potatoes or even grapes to make alcohol, then concentrate it by distillation. Filter the resulting colorless, odorless spirit, possibly give it a fruit flavor, push out the publicity boat with...
...Several leading Mexican writers have even portrayed the vast immigration of Mexican workers to southwestern United States represents a Reconquista of the lost territories. And it was precisely this equation of the old map with the flood of immigrants into the southwestern United States that angered many who blasted Absolut over...