Pepsico

When an estimated 130 million viewers gather in front of the television to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, many in the audience will be as interested in the the flashy advertisements as in the football game. As TV's most-watched event, the Super Bowl is advertising's premier showcase - and sponsorship this year reflects the changing economy. Gone is the deluge of dot-com companies that paid an average $2.2 million, and as much as $3 million, for a 30-second spot last year in Atlanta.

Mike Stoogenke is a mapmaker. He's not a cartographer, although certainly atlases and topographic maps might reflect his work. He is a founder and manager of GeoSource, now a division of Galson Technical Services, which stands at the junction where maps meet databases on the emerging information superhighway. Stoogenke's maps appear on computer screens. And they're dynamic instead of static, since the information that clients feed his software alters the landscape instantly.

While parents collected their youngsters at the Evergreen Child Development Center, Gregg Lachewitz, breadwinner, father and construction worker, conferred in a corner with director Donna B. Snyder. "I just had a down week last week," he said later to a visitor while sitting in a munchkin-size chair and bouncing 2 3/4-year-old Michael Lachewitz on his knee. Because of that, Lachewitz, 32, was short on the weekly tuition he pays for child-care at the center in Buckingham Township, Bucks County.

Q: Where can I learn about which companies are doing right by their employees, their communities, the environment and so on? - L.D., Houston The Fool responds: Check out the annual list of "Best Corporate Citizens" published by CR Magazine , which focuses on corporate responsibility. Its Top 10 honorees for 2013 are AT&T, Mattel, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eaton, Intel, Gap, Hasbro, Merck, Campbell Soup and Coca-Cola Enterprises. (Find the entire list at thecro.com.) The folks at ethisphere.com have named the "World's Most Ethical Companies.

Michael H. Jordan, 73, a skilled troubleshooter who held leadership roles at CBS, PepsiCo, and Westinghouse, died Tuesday in New York City from complications related to cancer. As chairman and chief executive, Mr. Jordan was instrumental in crafting the media conglomerate that became the CBS of today. As the top executive at Westinghouse Electric Corp., he engineered the acquisition of CBS in 1995. He later shed Westinghouse's industrial businesses and kept the media business. Viacom Inc. bought CBS in 1999, but they parted ways seven years later.

NCO Group Inc., Horsham, said today it appointed Ronald A. Rittenmeyer as president and chief executive officer, effective immediately. He replaced Michael J. Barrist, who will remain chairman of the debt-collection company. Barrist had also been president and chief executive since 1986. Rittenmeyer has been consulting with NCO for the last four months on plans for corporate growth and cost savings, the company said. He was chairman, president and chief executive of Electronic Data Systems until its sale to Hewlett-Packard Co. in 2008.

The Chester County Commissioners on Tuesday approved giving a $1 million below-market-rate loan to UB Foods U.S. to further encourage the firm to establish a plant in Oxford Borough. Officials from UB Foods, which makes Keebler snacks, told borough residents last Thursday that the firm intends to buy the former Pepsico Unibev plant, which has been empty for three years. The commissioner's action follows a recommendation by the county's Industrial Development Authority, which actually is making the loan.

The price of Coke and Pepsi may be about to go a lot higher. But even if their products are more expensive to consumers, the twin titans of the nation's $24 billion-a-year soft-drink industry may be about to cast a much longer shadow over independent bottlers such as Frank's Beverages of Philadelphia. Those are the major conclusions emerging as observers began to assess the enormous potential changes being faced by the nation's beverage industry. Within the last two months, PepsiCo Inc. has offered to buy Seven-Up Co., the nation's fourth-largest soft-drink firm, from Philip Morris Cos. Inc. for $380 million.

Aramark Corp., one of Philadelphia's largest companies, has hired a former PepsiCo executive to succeed longtime chief executive Joseph Neubauer. Eric J. Foss joined the privately held food-services and facilities-management giant as its new president and CEO Tuesday. Foss, 53, retired as CEO of Pepsi Beverages Co., a $20 billion division of the soft-drink maker, on Dec. 9. That makes the CEO succession at Aramark something of Pepsi generation phenomenon. The 70-year-old Neubauer had held several senior positions at PepsiCo in the 1970s, including the head of its Wilson Sports Goods division before joining what was then called ARA Services at its chief financial officer in 1979.

A major munchie-maker has decided to proceed with opening a new production plant in Oxford, a quiet Chester County community of 4,000 near the Maryland and Delaware borders. UB Foods U.S. announced last night that it was planning to invest about $40 million to buy and equip an empty bottling plant to manufacture a new food product that it declined to disclose. The facility will employ 140 people when it opens in early 1993. UB Foods had applied for a $3 million state financing package with interest rates as low as 2 percent to purchase the Pepsico plant, vacant for almost three years.