Sara Lee to Simplify Management Structure

The planned move is designed to better align Sara Lee’s international management structure with the company’s multi-year transformation from a diversified holding company to an integrated operating company.

21/03/07 Sara Lee Corporation announced that it intends to simplify the management structure of its International business and that the company has initiated the information-sharing and consultation procedures with relevant works councils in Europe, as required, to implement the change. The planned move is designed to better align Sara Lee’s international management structure with the company’s multi-year transformation from a diversified holding company to an integrated operating company.

In the new structure, Vincent Janssen, chief executive officer, Household & Body Care, and Frank van Oers, chief executive officer, Coffee & Tea, will report directly to Sara Lee Corporation Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Brenda C. Barnes. Sara Lee’s International Bakery segment, led by Miguel Llado, group president bakery Europe, will report to Van Oers. As a result, the company will eliminate a layer of management in Sara Lee International, including the role of Chief Executive Officer of that business, which currently is held by longtime Sara Lee executive Adriaan Nühn, as well as approximately 10 other positions. Implementation of the organizational design, which has been initiated and will be led by Nühn and his executive team, is anticipated to be completed no later than December, 2007.

“Simplifying our international management structure will keep the focus of our businesses as close to the customer as possible and, as a result, will strengthen our competitiveness and performance in an evolving global marketplace,” said Barnes. “Adriaan Nühn has been an exceptional leader during his 17 years with Sara Lee. Most recently, he assembled a powerful team that has greatly improved the performance of our Household & Body Care and Coffee & Tea businesses in the last two years, and we look forward to that same team’s leadership in implementing these critical changes.”

Sara Lee’s International business includes the global Household & Body Care, International Beverage (Coffee & Tea) and International Bakery reporting segments. The headquarters for the reporting segments will continue to be based in Utrecht, The Netherlands, and the local management structures in each country/region in which the company operates will remain unchanged.