"Gillette Removes Hawley From Board"--Reuters
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>>> Gillette Removes Hawley From Board
Last updated: 19 Oct 2000 22:18 GMT (Reuters)
By Christopher Noble
BOSTON (Reuters) - Gillette Co. G.N board member Warren Buffett on Thursday removed the consumer product giant's Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Hawley, informing the veteran executive he no longer had the board's confidence and should resign.
"We appreciated enormously what he'd done for the company...but we thought there was someone better for the job," Buffett told reporters in a conference call. "There comes a point when you decide there could be somebody out there who could do a better job."
"I was very candid, as were other members of the board," said Buffett, who acted as the point man on Thursday, fielding questions from analysts and journalists.
Hawley's resignation comes after less than two years as the top executive of Gillette, where he began his career in 1961. He leaves behind a company that has struggled over the past two years with disappointing results.
Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc BRKa.N , said he disliked lowering the boom on Hawley, but it was not an unfamiliar role for the billionaire investor known for his homespun investment wisdom and love of ice cream, hamburgers and soda.
In a similar scenario, the chairman and chief executive of Coca-Cola Co. KO.N resigned in December 1999 after a meeting with Buffet and another top investor. Buffett was reported to have told Douglas Ivester that he was no longer the man to lead the global soft drinks powerhouse.
Ivester was blamed for a series of company missteps, including a drink contamination scare in Europe and racial diversity issues. The cumulative effect on the company's image was more than Buffett and other investors could accept.
Buffett delivered the bad news to Hawley during a one-on-one meeting at Gillette headquarters, where the board met on Thursday for a regularly scheduled meeting.
"It's a blow to anyone to be asked to resign," Buffett said, his tone subdued. "He's a first class gentleman and he accepted it as a gentleman, but it has to be a personal blow. And it's no fun to deliver, but it's a whole lot less fun to receive it."
Buffett was unable or unwilling to specify what Hawley was doing or not doing that led the board to its decision. Instead, he used several sports analogies, such as the company needing a baseball player who hits for a higher average.
He did say that quarterly performance and stock price were not considerations in the decision.
"You have a .320 hitter but you feel that you need a .370 hitter," Buffett said. "I don't have some check sheet that I use where I go down the line of 50 questions. It's subjective in many ways." <<< |
