|
Estée Lauder CFO Says Rotation Key To Retaining Finance Staff |
|
|
| |
|
|
Tracey Travis, CFO of Estée Lauder. PHOTO: ESTEE LAUDER COS.
|
|
|
Good day. The circuitous career path of Tracey Travis, the finance chief of Estée Lauder Cos., is shaping how the New York cosmetics giant attracts and develops finance employees amid stiff competition for talent in a tight labor market, CFO Journal’s Ezequiel Minaya reports.
Outside the comfort zone: Central to the company’s finance talent and recruitment effort is the notion that getting the best from a team often involves placing talented employees outside their comfort zone. Ms. Travis pushed for the creation of a program that enables existing finance staff to gain exposure to different areas of the company by taking on short-term assignments. She also backed a program that offers recent MBA graduates rotating stints in everything from brand finance to supply chain to investor relations.
[Continues below…]
|
|
|
|
Diverse background: “The breadth of the responsibilities that I have today were built on the experiences I had early in my career,” said Ms. Travis, a former General Motors Co. engineer who ran plants, distribution centers, and sales teams for PepsiCo Inc. and delved into IT, compliance, investor relations, corporate and brand strategy at other companies.
More to come: These kinds of programs are becoming more widespread due to a tight labor market and a workforce that is increasingly accustomed to hopping between jobs and companies, said James Langston, a managing director at executive search firm Diversified Search. “It benefits the company in a great way because you have a much more versatile finance division,” he said. “And it also is a recruiting tool in this hyper-competitive market for the younger set who is not interested in being pigeonholed.”
|
|
|
U.S. jobless claims, released at 8:30 a.m. ET, are seen slipping to 210,000 from 214,000 the prior week. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Fed's manufacturing survey for October is predicted to fall to 20 from 22.9 in September.
The Blackstone Group LP, E*TRADE Financial Corp. and Paypal Holdings Inc. are among the companies reporting earnings today.
|
|
|
Akzo Nobel Bets On Price Hikes To Combat Rising Raw Material Costs |
|
Dutch paint maker Akzo Nobel NV continues to hike prices and exit low-margin products to combat rising raw-material costs and currency inflation in some of its core markets, CFO Journal's Nina Trentmann reports.
“We continue to push through price increases,” Maarten de Vries, the company’s finance chief, said Wednesday in an interview with CFO Journal.
The Amsterdam-based company raised prices of its coatings by 7% in the third quarter, compared to a 5% increase in the second quarter. Prices for its paint products on average rose by 5% in the third quarter, up from 4% in the second quarter, Mr. de Vries said.
|
|
|
|
Mark Zuckerberg has a lock on the bulk of Facebook’s supervoting shares. PHOTO: GERARD JULIEN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
|
|
|
Several public funds with holdings in Facebook Inc., including New York City’s pension funds, are backing a shareholder proposal to push out Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg as chairman of the social-media giant’s board of directors.
Constellation Brands Inc., a family-controlled company that transformed itself from a boxed-wine seller to a beverage giant that brews Corona and has bet big on marijuana, is handing the reins to an outsider for the first time.
EBay.com Inc. on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com Inc. accusing the company of illegally poaching sellers on its marketplace via eBay ’s internal messaging system.
Tesla Inc. gained a foothold in the world’s biggest market for electric vehicles, completing the purchase of land for its new Shanghai plant.
Uber Technologies Inc., in its ongoing quest to move beyond its unprofitable business of connecting drivers with passengers, is adding a new tractor-trailer rental business to help big-rig truckers haul freight around the country.
Alcoa Corp. said higher U.S. aluminum prices from a tariff on imports and rising sales of the raw materials needed to make aluminum improved its revenue in the third quarter and drove up its profit outlook for the year.
Chinese online retailer JD.com is staking a claim in China’s intensely competitive package-delivery market by opening its logistics network to parcels shipped by consumers and businesses.
Novartis AG on Thursday said it would buy cancer-drug maker Endocyte Inc. for $2.1 billion, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant’s latest move to refocus on higher-value medicines.
|
|
|
|
|
The Prudential Tower in Newark, N.J. PHOTO: VICTOR J. BLUE/BLOOMBERG NEWS
|
|
|
-
U.S. regulators released Prudential Financial Inc. from federal oversight on Wednesday, the strongest signal yet that the risk of heightened post-financial-crisis supervision is fading for firms outside the banking sector.
-
A U.S. appeals court will hear the U.S. Justice Department’s objection to AT&T Inc.’s purchase of TimeWarner on Dec. 6, Reuters reports.
-
Some banks are fighting a rearguard action to blunt the impact of a new accounting rule that revamps how they book losses on soured loans, and members of Congress are siding with the banks in their dispute with independent rule makers.
-
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged a former insurance industry wunderkind with fraud, claiming he and an associate diverted more than $300 million from insurers they controlled and caused the companies to become insolvent.
-
Two former Deutsche Bank AG traders were found guilty of trying to rig a key lending benchmark that was considered one of the most important barometers of the world’s financial health.
|
|
|
|
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speaking during a news conference following the Sept. 26 monetary policy meeting in Washington. PHOTO: SUSAN WALSH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
|
|
|
-
U.S. Federal Reserve officials signaled they see a strong economy justifying continued interest-rate increases—and said they will watch for evidence their moves are keeping economic growth on an even keel, minutes of their September policy meeting showed.
-
The U.S. opened a new front in its mounting economic conflict with China, starting a process to withdraw from a 144-year-old international postal body whose discounts allow Chinese merchants to ship small packages to U.S. customers at sharply lower rates.
-
The U.S. is boosting the size of a credit line available to Mexico in times of need, part of a largely symbolic display of close ties as the countries prepare to sign a new version of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
-
New York taxpayers sent about $24 billion more to the U.S. government last year than the state got back in federal spending, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli reported Wednesday, according to Bloomberg.
|
|
|
Not all pass-throughs are equal. Some partnerships and other companies expecting to benefit from the new 20% pass-through deduction may lose out because they generate too much service revenue.
A deficit of taxes? The budget deficit swelled by 17% to $779 billion as corporate tax collections fell sharply and interest payments on the national debt rose, among other factors.
Global investment slowed. As U.S. companies repatriate funds from foreign subsidiaries–encouraged by shifts in U.S. tax law–they are investing less overseas. But foreign investment in the U.S. declined as well.
Not-so-risky business? Increased pension-fund contributions–spurred by a September deadline to claim deducations at last year’s higher rates–are among the factors that could spur more companies to turn their retirement plans over to insurers.
Shunning the nanny state. Very few of those who employ nannies and other domestic workers pay the required federal taxes, tax columnist Laura Saunders writes.
|
|
|
Zillow Group Inc., the Seattle real estate listing company, named Jennifer Rock as Chief Accounting Officer, effective Oct. 17. Ms Rock has served as interim Chief Financial Officer and interim CAO since May.
|
|
|
Ms. Rock will continue as interim CFO while the company searches for a replacement. Ms. Rock has served as vice president, financial reporting, technical accounting and financial planning and analysis since March.
Spirit Airlines Inc., the Miami budget airline, named Scott Haralson chief financial officer, effective Oct. 16. He succeeds Ted Morgan Christie, who was promoted to president earlier this year and will become chief executive officer on Jan. 1.
Mr. Haralson most recently served as Spirit's vice president of financial planning and analysis and corporate real estate.
|
|
|
|
|
|