Avon Taps Former SABMiller Executive as Finance Chief

Avon Products Inc. on Thursday named Jamie Wilson, a former executive at brewer SABMiller PLC, to be Avon's chief financial officer, making him its third head of finance in the past three years.

The move is effective Jan. 1. James Scully, who currently serves as both CFO and chief operating officer, will remain in the COO role through 2017 and continue work on Avon's three-year transformation plan outlined this year, which includes trimming costs.

Mr. Wilson will earn an annual base salary of £ 550,000 ($645,730) pounds and work out of Avon's new U.K. headquarters, which the company expects to be fully operational in January.

Mr. Wilson previously was CFO at SABMiller from 2011 to 2015, when he resigned citing personal reasons. His departure came at a critical time for SABMiller and the beer industry as a whole amid a period ripe for consolidation. Indeed, months after Mr. Wilson's resignation, Anheuser-Busch InBev NV won over SABMiller's board with a roughly $100 billion takeover deal, which was completed this fall.

Mr. Scully became CFO in 2015, following the departure of Kimberly Ross in 2014. Mr. Scully came to Avon from J. Crew Group Inc., where he worked for a decade, nearly two years of which he served as J. Crew's chief operating officer.

Avon, which sells cosmetics, perfumes and accessories through a network of roughly six million representatives world-wide, reported in November it swung to a profit in its third quarter. Avon stock, which has climbed 54% in the past 12 months, was inactive premarket.

Write to Joshua Jamerson at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 01, 2016 08:45 ET (13:45 GMT)

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