The Coca-Cola Company is buying U.K.-based Costa Limited, a global coffee chain with almost 4,000 retail outlets, for $5.1 billion, it announced today.
While Costa does not compete in the U.S. market, it is the U.K.’s leading coffee chain and operates several hundred outlets in China. Its parent company, Whitbread, also operates the Premier Inn hotel chain. American hedge fund Elliott Management took a roughly 10% stake and argued for splitting the business, the BBC reports. As of April, Whitbread was planning to slowly spin off Costa. Then Coca-Cola came along.
