Leadership changes at Mandarin Oriental, DFI Retail
Janice Lim
TWO subsidiaries of multinational conglomerate Jardine Matheson Holdings announced leadership changes on Tuesday (May 2).
In a bourse filing, hotel chain Mandarin Oriental announced that Laurent Kleitman will be taking over James Riley as group chief executive from Sep 1, 2023.
Kleitman was most recently the president and chief executive of Parfums Christian Dior, which is the largest luxury fashion beauty business owned by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the filing indicated.
He was responsible for the business globally, managing the luxury brand’s perfume, make-up, and skincare categories.
Prior to joining LVMH in 2019, he was president of the consumer beauty division of Coty, a beauty company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Before that, he spent 25 years at Unilever and held global and regional leadership roles covering the United Kingdom, Europe, and Asia, across its personal care, home care, and food businesses.
Riley, who was group chief executive of Mandarin Oriental since 2015, will be stepping down on Jul 31. However, he will be available to support the management team until Kleitman begins his new role.
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Also on Tuesday, DFI Retail Group , which operates supermarkets Giant and Cold Storage among other consumer businesses, announced that Scott Price will take over the helm from Ian McLeod as group chief executive from Aug 1, 2023.
In a bourse filing, DFI said that Price is an experienced senior business executive with 25 years of international experience, of which 19 years were spent in Asia, spanning the retail, logistics and consumer packaged goods sectors.
Most recently, he was president at UPS Interational, and before that the company’s chief strategy and transformation officer. Prior to UPS, he was the chief executive officer for Walmart in Asia.
Before that, he was president and CEO at DHL Express in Europe after serving as CEO for DHL Asia-Pacific.
McLeod will remain with DFI until the beginning of August to ensure a smooth transition of the business to Price over the next few months.
Shares of Mandarin Oriental closed flat at US$1.85 on Tuesday, while DFI Retail ended 1 per cent or US$0.03 higher at US$3.03.
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