Word: daft
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Wall Street investors are fretting over the future of the global colossus, while business strategists ponder what went wrong. Last week Coke named Australian-born Douglas Daft, 56, who runs the company's Asia and Middle East operations, as president and heir- apparent. But that didn't do anything for Coke's stock price, which fell $4.125 a share last Monday on the news of Ivester's retirement--a 6% drop that knocked $9.9 billion off the company's market value--and dropped 75[cents] more by Friday's close...
Fortunately for Coke's board of directors, diplomacy is just one of Douglas Daft's strengths. The 30-year company veteran has spent most of his career overseas, building successful businesses in the uncertain, even untrammeled markets of the Middle East and Asia. If Ivester seems almost uncomfortable outside the world of the beverage business or his native Georgia, Daft is a jovial former math teacher with a wry sense of humor, a diverse range of interests and a creative streak. He pushed to develop Coke's biggest seller in Japan, for instance, and likes to joke that...
Syrup may prove to be one of Daft's biggest challenges, assuming that he takes office as CEO next April. In what seems to many analysts to be an ever desperate bid to increase revenues, one of Ivester's most recent moves was to hike the price of Coke's concentrate by a steep 7.7%. In effect, that represents a penalty for the company's cost-conscious bottling affiliates. In the past, Coke has offset such cost increases by funneling hundreds of millions of dollars in financial assistance to its key bottlers. But bottlers expressed outrage at last month...
...contrast, in discussions with reporters in Atlanta, Daft struck a determined, confident note. The new millennium, he said "is the year of recovery for the world, and obviously our business will be part of that." The previous growth targets, Daft insisted, will be sustained. That made analysts nervous, because for all his attributes, Coke's new Doug was still sounding very much like the old Doug. Unless the tune changes, they say, the real value of this brand of carbonated sugar water is likely to be put to an even greater test...
...trainspotters' version, which is to say you could recognise it by the emphasised snare drum or hand clap sound on the two and four beats, and in its repetition of catchy sing-along shout-along phrases. In recent years, the filtered French disco house sound of groups such as Daft Punk has been the dominant trend. Perhaps the best house record of 1999 has been Basement Jaxx's Remedy album, which goes back to the roots of house and still manages to achieve a fresh, futuristic sound...