Nestle investors urge chairman to step down after second CEO exit
Nestle (NESN.S) investors are pressuring Chairman Paul Bulcke to resign following the abrupt departure of a second chief executive in just over a year, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.
Shareholders told the newspaper that the dismissal of Laurent Freixe earlier this month, and the way Nestle handled investigations into his conduct, had intensified concerns over governance and raised doubts about Bulcke’s leadership, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
Freixe was ousted for failing to disclose a romantic relationship with a subordinate, coming a year after his predecessor Mark Schneider suddenly left. Bulcke himself announced in June that he would step down next year.
“I don’t think Bulcke will move on before April but he should have left when Mark Schneider was forced out,” Alexandre Stucki, founder of AS Investment Management, which represents some of Nestle’s founding family investors, told the FT.
Nestle told the FT that the two CEO departures were unrelated and that Freixe’s dismissal was due to a clear breach of its code of conduct. The company did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Bulcke, 70, has chaired the board since 2017 after serving as Nestle’s CEO from 2008 to 2016. Investor support has waned in recent years amid weak sales growth and concerns about the company’s post-pandemic recovery. In April, he was re-elected with 84.8% of the vote, down from nearly 96% in 2017.
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