Pierre Denis, currently CEO of Jimmy Choo Group Limited, will become CEO of [Coty Inc.] following the firm’s ongoing strategic review, with an expected start during summer 2020. Pierre Laubies, who has been helming Coty since November 2018, “has been instrumental to successfully leading the company’s transformation and completion of the integration of the P&G Beauty Business,” the New York-based firm said in a late February announcement. The merger with Procter & Gamble Co.’s beauty business was a massive transaction that was lengthy to negotiate and took some 15 months to finally close in October 2016, at which point key assets such as CoverGirl had begun collecting dust and the US mass market was in decline. In July 2019 the firm wrote down roughly $3bn in value of brands acquired in the deal. The firm has begun work to rationalize its portfolio, starting with the late 2019 sale of Younique back to the company’s founders for a fraction of the $600m Coty paid for it in 2017. (Also see "Coty ‘Absolutely Not In Fire Sale Mode’ Following Younique Divestiture That ‘Stunned’ Investors" - HBW Insight, 18 November, 2019.)At that time, Camilo Pane was CEO. His tenure, like Laubies’ and those of Pane’s immediate two predecessors, Bart Becht and Michele Scannavini, was short, with none lasting much more than two years.
Denis will be the first CEO of that lineage with direct experience in the beauty business, including in leadership roles...
