[rapatel0]

McDonalds has a franchise model and is in 100 markets. There are several thousand individually owned companies with various groupings of regional owners each of which needs to have delivery, logistics, costing negotiated and setup. There are also the compliance and trade aspects of being in basically every country.

Coke is a probably 90% margin product for macdonalds. Not sure i believe the 1B number. It's probably higher if you consider all the various coke products including and the juice that they sell.

Pepsi actually owns taco bell, burger king, etc which are direct competition. So the partnership with McDonalds is strategic.

It's easily worth having a top level exec.

[silisili]

At least in the US, Pepsi used to own Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and one or two others but that spun into its own company years ago(called Yum).