Mondelēz International has announced that Dirk Van de Put, current president and CEO of McCain Foods, will succeed Irene Rosenfeld as the company's chief executive, effective November 2017.
Long-time CEO Rosenfeld will continue as chairman of the board until 31 March 2018, at which time she will retire and Van de Put will assume the role of chairman and CEO.
"Throughout my tenure as CEO, the world and our industry have undergone a period of unprecedented change," said Rosenfeld. "The outlook is bright for this great company — one of the few that has consistently delivered on both the top and bottom lines, while making critical investments for future growth."
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Past Experience
Van de Put has nearly 30 years' experience in the food and consumer packaging industry, having held executive positions at Novartis, Danone, Coca-Cola and Mars.
He is joining Mondelēz from McCain Foods, where he spent six years as CEO. It was recently announced that he would be replaced in that position by Max Koeune.
"Our thorough multi-year succession process has identified Dirk as the right leader, with a distinct combination of skills and industry experience [...] to succeed as our next CEO," said Mark Ketchum, lead independent director of Mondelēz International.
Company Performance
Mondelēz has reported that net revenues decreased by 5%, to $5,986 million, for the second quarter of 2017. It noted that the cyberattack at the end of June impacted these figures, but it is expecting organic net revenue to increase by the end of the full year.
"We delivered strong margin expansion and double-digit EPS growth in the quarter, despite the revenue impact from the malware incident at the end of June," said Rosenfeld.
"We're seeing improved trends in Europe and across many of our emerging markets, and our North America business is on track for a stronger second half. In addition, as a result of our improving free cash-flow outlook, we're increasing our dividend payout."
Mondelēz is a leading global snack-food company, with brands such as Cadbury and Oreo. The company generated net revenues of approximately $26 billion in 2016.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Sarah Harford. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
