Muhtar Kent on stakeholder value creation
From CEO Voices: Leading with Communication with guest Muhtar Kent, Former Chairman and CEO of The Coc... · · UVA Darden Podcasts
“In order to sustainably grow value for your shareholders, you have to also generate value on a sustainable basis for all your key stakeholders. So in our case it started with our employees then our consumers then our customers around the world that served our consumers then our partners all our bottling partners our NGO partners because we believe from the beginning what we call the power of partnerships that when you partner you can actually generate synergies on a lasting basis and then even in that stakeholder group was governments that hosted us in 207 nations and communities that hosted us.”
On , Muhtar Kent, Former Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Coca-Cola Company (The), spoke about stakeholder value creation during CEO Voices: Leading with Communication with guest Muhtar Kent, Former Chairman and CEO of The Coc... on UVA Darden Podcasts.
About Muhtar Kent
At Coca-Cola's 2019 annual shareholders meeting, outgoing Chairman Muhtar Kent responded to activist Ray Rogers' allegations of human rights abuses at Coca-Cola facilities in Latin America and elsewhere by stating that "nothing could be further from the truth of those allegations" and that "there's just no ground to any of those allegations." Kent said the company sees "eye to eye with all our bottlers related to issues of adhering to the highest standards of human rights," but noted that bottlers are "independent companies run by independent leadership teams" and that "not everything can be dictated to bottlers." He said the company would continue to work with activists to "influence" and "bring matters to a better place." In a 2018 CNBC interview, Kent described the global business environment as characterized by "volatility, volatility, volatility, and more unknowns," adding that "running a global business is just getting tougher and harder" due to socio-political dynamics. He said he was a "realistic optimist" that the US-China trade dispute would be resolved "for the benefit of both countries and the world." Kent also said that while Coca-Cola is "the quintessential American brand," the company is "so local" in China, noting that its ownership includes Chinese state-owned and Chinese enterprise partners.