Being a major multinational company in the food and beverage sector of the industry, we have served our customers since 1898. In 2012, we saw a need to ensure quick cuts in costs and that is why we announced a job cut of 8,700 jobs within the company.
We saw an urgent need to save costs which amounted to a value of $1.5 billion, and thus, formulated a new cost cutting plan, which demanded a job cut of around 8,700 employees, across 30 countries. The cost cutting plan was designed to have complete effect until 2014. Our then spokesperson, Jeff Dahncke, shared the view that around 2000 of the job cuts were likely to occur in the U.S., where we had employed around 100,000 workers.
We made a note that the job cuts we had in mind, represented only 3% of the 300,000 skilled global workforce we had working for us. But as we had experienced a 4% slip in company profits, it prompted us to take a quick action on an urgent basis. That is why a cost cutting plan was put into effect immediately, which involved definite procedures that were planned up to 2014.
While we had the intention to cut our costs, we had a sideline goal of boosting our spending efforts on marketing and advertising, from $500 to $600 million within the year. We also planned to hike our dividends to $2.15 per share, with a 4% climb, which would become payable in 2012. We also planned to purchase $3 billion of shares within the same year as well.
While our Chief Executive shared the news that the company had experienced an 8% annual growth, as calculated in earnings per share; over a period of the last five years, job cuts were still on the plan. The company also planned to return $30 billion as dividends and share purchases to shareholders in 2012.
Our decision to opt for a job cut of 8,700 employees was announced after a statement was issued by the U.S. Labor Department, which stated that the economy had, in fact, gained a total of 243,000 jobs in the January of the same year, which had knocked down the unemployment rate to a number of 8.3%.