In a move that echoes rival Pepsi's move, Coca-Cola, the world's biggest soft-drink maker, is in talks to buy the North American operations of bottler Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. for an amount totaling $15 billion including debt, sources familiar with the deal said.

An agreement is expected in a week's time, told sources, which declined to be identified because talks are still private.

Coca-Cola Enterprises soared 27 per cent in after-hours trading to $24.35 and the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, rose 33 cents to $55.16 in NYSE trading.

In a move that was meant to free up the parent companies' balance sheets, Coca-cola spun off Coca Cola Enterprises in 1986. Pepsi did the same in 1999 by hiving off its bottling operations and later announcing its intention to buy them in 2009. Coca-cola now imitates Pepsi's moves to acquire two of its bottlers Pepsi Bottling Group Inc. and PepsiAmericas Inc. Yesterday, shareholders of the two largest bottlers of Pepsi approved the deals to be bought for a combined $7.8 billion.

Once the deal is done it would mark end of Coke's strategy of keeping its main operations separate from the production and distribution of the end products.