Business Briefs: Starbucks to pay $2 billion to Kraft

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

photo Starbucks' corporate headquarters is seen in this Monday, Jan. 26, 2009, file photo taken, in Seattle.

Starbucks to pay $2 billion to Kraft

An arbitrator has concluded that Starbucks must pay $2.76 billion to settle a dispute with Kraft over coffee distribution.

The two consumer products companies had been locked in a fight for three years after Starbucks Corp. fired Kraft as its distributor of packaged coffee to grocery chains.

The arbitrator determined that Starbucks must pay $2.23 billion in damages and $527 million in attorney fees, Starbucks and Mondelez said Tuesday.

Kraft began exclusively marketing Starbucks roasted and grounded coffee in stores in 1998 and renegotiated the contract in 2004.

The contract was set to expire in 2014. But in November 2010, Starbucks told Kraft it was severing its agreement with Kraft.

VW global sales up from China

The Volkswagen brand's sales rose 3.4 percent in the first 10 months of the year to 4.88 million with strong growth in China. The company said Tuesday that it delivered 2.02 million vehicles in China, up 17.9 percent in the period from a year ago, according to VW.

"We continued to grow in the Asia-Pacific region where deliveries in China, our largest single market, remained very encouraging," said Christian Klingler, board member for sales and marketing for the Volkswagen Group.

The surge in China offset a decline for the year in Europe and North America.