ISTANBUL — He is a son of privilege, educated at elite private schools in Turkey and universities in England. He is named after his great uncle, Turkey’s first ambassador to Washington. His father was also an ambassador who never appeared in public without a necktie, carried a walking stick and collected Greek antiquities.
Yet Muhtar Kent’s gift is his ability to connect with ordinary people around the world who are consumers of the product he has been peddling for most of his adult life: Coca-Cola.
When he takes over on July 1 as chief executive officer of Coke, he will bring considerable experience overseas to the world’s largest soft drink maker, which relies heavily on foreign sales to drive its profits and growth.
Friends and former colleagues in Turkey describe him as a diplomat and an internationalist, perfectly suited for Coke’s global reach. He speaks fluent English, Turkish, French and Italian, and prefers to spend downtime on business trips abroad trolling convenience stores and supermarkets to survey local reaction to Coke products.
“He was really able to understand the local culture and was relevant to the local culture,” said Michael O’Neill, who worked with Kent in the early 1990s, when he was president of Coke’s east-central Europe division and oversaw the soft drink’s expansion into former Soviet bloc nations.
“Coke needed a pioneering spirit to go into these countries,” O’Neill said. “Muhtar was a pioneer.”
Kent, 55, was born in New York, the only child of the Turkish consul general there, and was raised in Thailand, India and Iran, while his father served in those countries as ambassador.
He is gregarious and handsome, and at 6-feet, 1-inch, a commanding presence at board meetings and dinner parties.
“I call him bulldozer,” said Tuncay Ozilhan, chairman of the Anadolu Group and Kent’s boss from 1999 to 2005 when Kent headed Turkey-based Efes Beverage Group, which owns Coca-Cola and beer operations from Eastern Europe to Central Asia.
“He pushes the market. He pushes the consumer,” Ozilhan said. “He’s very stubborn. He never stopped pushing.”
Kent began his career at Coke in 1978 in Atlanta. After rising through the corporate ranks mostly in Europe, he left in 1998 to become president and chief executive officer of Efes.
When Coke was courting Kent to return, Ozilhan said he gave his blessing only after outgoing chief executive E. Neville Isdell assured him in confidence that Kent would eventually be considered for the company’s top position.
Under Kent’s leadership, Efes expanded far outside Turkey, experiencing triple-digit revenue growth during his tenure from 1999 to 2005.
“He’s very hard-working. There is no time limit. From six, seven o’clock (in the morning) until 10, 11 at night. All the time.
“It’s unbelievable,” Ozilhan said.
The work ethic and self-discipline were imprinted on Kent as a child.
Kent’s father, Necdet Kent, was a strict disciplinarian who once prevailed upon the Shah of Iran to shut down a motorcycle shop next to the Turkish Embassy because young Muhtar, who was a teenager at the time, was sneaking off to ride motorcycles there.
The next day, the motorcycle shop was a vacant lot.
