Company named for Green Ridge street eyes bid for Avon
BY JAMES HAGGERTY (STAFF WRITER)
Published: May 5, 2012
A Texas investment company headed by a Scranton native may be preparing a bid for cosmetics giant Avon Products Inc.
Richmont Holdings, a Dallas-based company that invests in banking, technology, publishing and environmentally responsible supplies, is arranging financing to bid on New York-based Avon, according to Fortune magazine and Bloomberg News.
Richmont founder John Rochon, a 1969 graduate of Scranton Central High School, named the company after the street in the city's Green Ridge section where he grew up, said Dalton businessman Jerry Joyce. Mr. Rochon served on the University of Scranton board in the early 1990s.
"He's a very smart, capable guy," said Mr. Joyce, who lived across the street from Mr. Rochon in Dallas in the late 1980s when Mr. Joyce headed Next Generation Network, an electronic billboard company. "If he sets his mind to this, he will do it."
Mr. Rochon, who has bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Toronto, is a former chief financial officer and chief executive officer at May Kay Inc., a door-to-door cosmetics company that became famous for awarding pink Cadillacs to its top sellers.
Richmont once was Avon's largest stockholder, according to the firm's website, and it attempted a takeover of Avon in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Efforts to reach Mr. Rochon and Richmont officials were unsuccessful. His sister, Paula Rochon Mackarey, who heads a Clarks Summit company that publishes Happenings magazine, also could not be reached.
Avon, the world's largest direct seller of cosmetics, replaced its CEO last month and the company's stock has lost about 30 percent of its value in the last year. Avon, whose signature products include Skin So Soft and Anew, an anti-aging line, rejected a $10 billion takeover offer last month from Coty, a smaller rival based in New York.
Contact the writer: jhaggerty@timesshamrock.com
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