This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.
PepsiCo this week named Indra Nooyi to become its chief executive officer in
October. The food and drink company is the world's second-largest soft drink
maker, behind Coca-Cola. Miz Nooyi will join just ten other women as CEOs among
the five hundred largest companies in the United States.
The fifty-year-old executive was born and raised in
India; she sometimes wears a traditional sari
at events.
She came to the United States in nineteen seventy-eight. She has graduate
business degrees from Yale University and the Indian Institute of Management in
Calcutta.
Indra Nooyi started with PepsiCo twelve years ago. She led negotiations for
the purchase of Quaker Oats and also helped the company buy juice maker
Tropicana.
She became president and chief financial officer of PepsiCo in two thousand
one. Now she will replace Steve Reinemund who has led the company since that
time. He is retiring. Under his leadership PepsiCo passed Coca-Cola last year in
stock market value.
PepsiCo had sales last year of almost thirty-three thousand million dollars.
Ms. Nooyi is the latest in a growing number of foreign-born executives to
lead international companies based in the United States. It appears her climb
has not been affected by a graduation speech she gave last year at the Columbia
Business School in New York. Her statements offended some people. She talked
about the United States as the "long middle finger" on a hand representing
different parts of the world. Critics said she insulted the United States.
PepsiCo offered an apology.
PepsiCo has been expanding its foreign markets. But a dispute in her own
homeland could serve as the first test for Indra Nooyi as chief executive.
A group in New Delhi says PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are misleading people about
the safety of their soft drinks in India. The Center for Science and Environment
recently tested different drinks made by the two companies. It says the tests
found high levels of pesticides in all fifty-seven bottles collected nationwide.
Insect poisons used on farms and in homes can enter groundwater.
PepsiCo and Coca-Cola say their products are safe and meet Indian and
international health rules.
And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Jill Moss.
I'm Faith
Lapidus.
sari :
莎丽（印度或巴基斯坦妇女穿的外套，由一定长度的轻质布料织成，一端绕于腰部做成裙子，另一端从肩部垂下或盖住头部）
（来源：VOA
英语点津姗姗编辑）
