Greece’s Largest Company Flees

Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling SA, the world’s second-largest Coca-Cola bottler, plans to move its main stock listing from Athens to London as Greece’s largest company by market value flees the epicenter of Europe’s debt crisis.

The move will make it eligible for inclusion in the benchmark FTSE 100 Index. A new company established in Switzerland by one of the bottler’s main shareholders will make a share-exchange offer for Coca-Cola Hellenic and seek a primary listing in London, according to an Athens bourse filing today. Coca-Cola HBC AG will also seek to list in New York.

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The move comes as European officials try to convince investors that Greece’s future belongs in the euro region three years after the country’s debt crisis broke out. While German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Athens to assure Greek citizens she wants them to stay in the euro, the largest opposition party says Greece should renege on all its bailout agreements and a report today showed unemployment rose above 25 percent in July. Read more >>

The (Big) Business of Food Stamps: “Here’s Where the Profits Come in”

Aaron Task  
Daily Ticker 
In 2011, a record 46 million people - or 1 in 7 Americans -- participated in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as Food Stamps. The increased use of Food Stamps is a huge social and political issue for America, and it's also big business. In 2011, the U.S. government spent $72 billion on Food Stamps.

Among the beneficiaries, food producers such as Cargill, PepsiCo., Coca-Cola and Kraft, as well as retailers like Wal-Mart. Of course, Wall Street gets a cut too, led by JPMorgan Chase, which administers the SNAP benefits in 24 states.

In the accompanying video, I discuss the (big) business of Food Stamps with Marion Nestle, professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University and author of several books, most recently Why Calories Count.

No inflation unless you eat, drink, drive or fly

McDonald's, Hershey and Coca-Cola all announced new price hikes or reiterated previous increases in their latest quarterly earnings reports over the past few days. The reason is obvious. Commodities are running amok.

It's costing restaurants and food makers a lot more money to produce or buy food as the price of cattle, wheat, sugar, corn and just about every other agricultural commodity has surged in the past year.

And even though the Federal Reserve may think that higher commodity costs are "transitory" -- which is the econobabble way of saying "Don't worry about it!" -- companies aren't so sure.

That could be bad news for consumers, who are already coping with soaring gasoline prices.

Along those lines, airlines are also boosting prices to deal with surging energy costs. Delta (DAL, Fortune 500), which reported a quarterly loss Tuesday, was still able to post an increase in sales thanks to "domestic fare increases and international fare surcharges as a means of passing through fuel costs to its customers." More...