Billionaire Elon Musk shocked the world when he announced his next takeover: Coca-Cola. The announcement came just a day after the Tesla chief took over Twitter.
Though the Coca-Cola statement was made jokingly, it immediately sent the business world in a tizzy. Experts started calculating if Musk can even pull something like this off.
“Next I'm buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in,” he tweeted on Thursday to his over 87 million followers. Statements like these are being carefully studied to understand how Musk will change the platform, or what he will do next.
Coca-Cola is considered the world's most valuable soft drink company. A simple Google search shows that its shares are higher than the $54.20 a share Musk offered for Twitter, standing at $65.56 on Thursday morning and the market capitalisation is at $284.20 billion.
The fact was highlighted by financial account Fintwit, which replied to Musk's announcement with a screenshot of Coca-Cola's valuation, saying: “Elon, you're too poor to buy Coca-Cola.”
According to Bloomberg, Mr Musk is the richest person in the world with an estimated wealth of $289 billion. He is also the in charge of the biggest electric car company in the world, which gives weight to his announcement.
His tweet is a nod to the veteran beverage company's colourful history with cocaine. Coca-Cola's eponymous trademark soft drink is named for its two primary ingredients: coca leaves and kola nuts. While kola nuts are a source of caffeine, coca leaves are the base from which the psychoactive drug cocaine is extracted.
Cocaine-laden coca leaves used to be an integral ingredient in the carbonated soft drink's formula, back in the nineteenth century when the substance was still considered medicinal. However, as the drug became stigmatised and Prohibition hit the US, cocaine was removed from Coca-Cola's secret formula and instead replaced with decocainised coca leaves.
