Treasury Wine CEO to Leave After A$160 Million Inventory Writedown; The company “needs a leader with a stronger operational focus to deliver the company’s growth ambitions”

September 24, 2013 Leave a comment

Treasury Wine CEO Quits After A$160 Million Writedown

Treasury Wine Estates Ltd. (TWE), the world’s second-largest publicly traded wine maker, said Chief Executive Officer David Dearie will leave the company immediately after writedowns to destroy out-of-date inventory. The company “needs a leader with a stronger operational focus to deliver the company’s growth ambitions,” Chairman Paul Rayner said in a regulatory statement today. Warwick Every-Burns, a director of Treasury Wine Estates, will become interim CEO. Dearie’s departure follows chief financial officer Mark Fleming, who quit about six weeks before the company announced the U.S. writedown. Treasury, whose brands include Penfolds and Beringer, said July 15 it would take A$160 million ($150 million) of writedowns to destroy stock, discount older bottles, and take charges for onerous grape-buying contracts. The company held an an excess of low-valued bulk wine, as a result of expected lower sales to the U.S., which will reduce earnings in the 2014 financial year by about A$30 million, it said previously.

To contact the reporter on this story: David Fickling in Sydney at dfickling@bloomberg.net

Filed under Investing Process, Macro Trends

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