Coca-Cola’s Globally Experienced CFO Named as New President

John Murphy, the Irish-born chief financial officer at Coca-Cola Co. with extensive experience in the company’s Japan, Southeast Asia and Latin American units, will now add president to his title.

Mr. Murphy will retain the CFO role as he moves up from executive vice president to president, replacing former Coke President Brian Smith. The promotion takes effect Oct. 1.

Mr. Smith will retire in February as president and chief operating officer after 25 years with the Atlanta-based beverage giant. His latest role before president was head of the Europe, Middle East and Africa Group. Before that, he spent three years heading up Latin America, the region he focused on when joining the company as group manager for mergers and acquisitions in 1997. He led the Brazil division as president from 2002-08 and the Mexico unit from 2008-12.

For his part, Mr. Murphy led the Asia Pacific group as president from 2016-18. Before that, he served as president of the South Latin business unit with responsibility for Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. He spent the four years from 2008-12 with responsibility over Central America and the Caribbean.

In addition to his Latin America stints, Mr. Murphy spent more than a decade in Asia working with Coca-Cola Co., including in Indonesia. He then spent some time at a bottling affiliate in Singapore.

On two separate assignments in the early 1990s and the early 2000s, he spent a total of nearly 10 years working for Coca-Cola Japan, culminating in a deputy president role in 2004.

In a luncheon speech at the Southeast-U.S. Japan Alliance conference in 2019, Mr. Murphy praised Japan for its culture of quality and innovation, noting that the company’s transformation away from its focus on so-called sparkling beverages to a categories like coffee, tea and juice largely gained traction there first. He recounted how Georgia Coffee, the canned coffee brand named after Coke’s home state, was created only after quite a bit of convincing of the leadership back at corporate headquarters. It’s now a billion-dollar brand.

“Our global vision today to be a total beverage company around the world was inspired by our journey there since the early 1990s and continues to be informed by the many lessons that we have learned in doing business in Japan,” Mr. Murphy said at the time.

As president , Mr. Murphy will oversee Coke’s Global Ventures; Platform Services; online-to-offline (O2O) digital transformation; and customer and commercial leadership, in addition to his CFO duties including M&A, investor relations, accounting, tax, treasury and more.

“John has been a vital business partner and leader at the company,” Quincey said. “As president and CFO, John’s new role will be instrumental in driving critical, enterprise-wide imperatives across the Coca-Cola system.”

Learn more: Japan: A Living Lab for Coca-Cola’s Beverage Evolution