I’m thinkin’ maybe they won’t be handing out Snickers or M&Ms at the Perez house this Halloween. Might not be handing out gum either. You see, up until Monday, William Perez was the president and CEO of Wrigley, the venerable Chicago gum maker.
Earlier this year the Wrigley company was taken over by candy behemoth Mars. One expects corporate clashes between two more than one-hundred-year-old companies run by strong-minded founding-family members. And Mars can be secretive to the point of nastiness. Ever try calling Mars to ask for the name of someone who works there? Curt with a definitely discernible undertone of tart annoyance is the most polite way to describe the phone answerer’s tone when denying this, or any other, request. But it’s a private company and they don’t have to talk to nobody no how. Everyone eats M&Ms after all, no need to coddle anyone.
Wrigley, on the other hand, was a public company, so there were all those SEC filings and all those shareholders and, hey, they built the baseball field, didn’t they? Wrigley was more chatty. Good for biz.
But back to Mr. Perez. Mars bought the company he headed a mere two weeks ago. It was a big decision for chairman William Wrigley Jr. II, handing his family’s legacy over to another outfit the way he did. But, having been assured that little or no change would be made by Mars — sure, it would be a subsidiary of Mars but a stand-alone subsidiary (whatever that means) — and that Perez would stay, Bill signed on the dotted line. He got himself and his shareholders a cool $23 billion.
So Perez schleps in to work this past Monday as usual, and, boom, he’s fired. Let go. Given the old cardboard box in which to pack his things. Seems Mars doesn’t want or need a smooth CEO type like Perez, who, after all, came to Wrigley two years ago with CEO of NIKE and S.C. Johnson on his résumé. Gotta pay a guy like that big bucks.
Mars, apparently not being a connoisseur of what Garrison Keillor refers to as the Minnesota Long Goodbye, issued a press release stating that “effective immediately” Perez was being replaced by Dushan “Duke” Petrovich, a 30-year Wrigley veteran and chief administrative officer. Petrovich obviously knows how the company’s run, having been in charge of, among other things, the gum maker’s global procurement, global supply chain, IT, human resources, corporate communications, and global real estate. The Duke, sadly, has only been given the title of president, the new Doublemint owners having decided to do away with the CEO position at Wrigley. So much for “stand alone.”
However, let us not shed too many tears for Perez, our cardboard-box lugging ex-CEO. In charge of Wrigley for a scant two years, Perez received a golden parachute the envy of ousted CEOs everywhere: $10.5 million in cash and more than $14 million to cover the excise taxes on his severance payments. (Alas, this is a service my accountant doesn’t offer — giving me money to pay my taxes.) And as if this golden parachute money wasn’t enough, Perez received $29 million for his Wrigley stock and options.
So come next weekend, when the tots ring the doorbell at the Perez residence, it won’t be that the family can’t afford mini Snickers bars or even a pack of gum. They’re probably just busy as all get out, having to unpack all that money from the cardboard box.
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