Kroger Chairman and CEO Rodney McMullen has resigned after an internal investigation into his personal conduct.<\/p>\n
Kroger, the nation\u2019s largest grocery chain, said Monday that the investigation into McMullen\u2019s personal conduct was unrelated to the business, but was found to be inconsistent with its business ethics policy.<\/p>\n
Board member Ronald Sargent will serve as chairman and interim CEO, effective immediately.<\/p>\n
Sargent has been on Kroger\u2019s board since 2006 and has served as the lead director of the company since 2017. He\u2019s worked in several roles at the grocery chain across stores, sales, marketing, manufacturing and strategy. Sargent is also the former chairman and CEO of Staples.<\/p>\n
McMullen, 64, began his career with Kroger in 1978 as a part-time stock clerk and bagger at a store in Lexington, Kentucky. He worked his way up through the company, becoming chief financial officer in 1995 and chief operating officer in 2009. McMullen was named Kroger\u2019s CEO in 2014 and became the company\u2019s chairman the following year.<\/p>\n
Cincinnati-based Kroger said its board was made aware of the situation on Feb. 21 and immediately hired an outside independent counsel to conduct an investigation, overseen by a special board committee.<\/p>\n
The company said that McMullen\u2019s conduct is not related to its financial performance, operations or reporting, and did not involve any Kroger associates.<\/p>\n
Kroger will conduct a search for its next CEO, with Sargent agreeing to remain as interim CEO until someone is appointed to the role permanently.<\/p>\n
Kroger shares fell more than 3.5% ahead of the opening bell Monday.<\/p>\n
McMullen\u2019s departure comes as Kroger is regrouping from its\u00a0failed effort\u00a0to merger with Albertsons. The two companies proposed what would have been the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history in 2022, saying they needed to combine forces to better compete with rivals like Walmart.<\/p>\n
But two judges\u00a0halted the $24.6 billion deal\u00a0in December, saying it was likely to lessen competition and raise prices. Albertsons later\u00a0sued Kroger, saying it had failed to make every effort to ensure that the merger would win regulatory approval.<\/p>\n\n
Kroger Chairman and CEO Rodney McMullen has resigned after an internal investigation into his personal conduct. Kroger, the nation\u2019s largest grocery chain, said Monday that the investigation into McMullen\u2019s personal conduct was unrelated to the business, but was found to be inconsistent with its business ethics policy. Board member Ronald Sargent will serve as chairman <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-37163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}