Cadbury Schweppes looks to roll out share plans across world

Cadbury Schweppes is looking to launch employee share plans across its global network.

The food and drink manufacturer, which operates in approximately 60 countries and employs 60,000 staff, is currently carrying out a global study to ascertain which countries are suitable to launch schemes in. This will take into account factors such as the number of employees based in a location, salary levels and staff turnover.

Stephanie Hallett, share plans manager, said: "Our business has changed quite a lot over the last few years. There are lots of countries that we don’t cover with sharesave schemes so we’re looking at where we need to put new plans in. As well as looking at the numbers of employees in each business, [we need to consider] can employees afford to save enough to buy a reasonable amount of shares? Also, if turnover is really high then people aren’t going to meet the three years and it just won’t work."

Cadbury Schweppes currently operates share plans in 11 countries, including the UK, Australia, Canada and the US. It is now looking to extend these into as many locations as possible. "We clearly won’t be covering all of them because some have [too few] staff but we’re trying to cover the main countries," said Hallett.

She added that the firm hoped to use the plans to encourage employee share ownership and performance. Despite differing tax and legislative rules governing share plans, the company aims to make all new schemes as similar to its existing schemes as possible.

The project is being led by a UK-based team, which aims to launch the new schemes between August and September 2007.