Dive Brief:
- David MacLennan took the helm at agribusiness giant Cargill on Sunday. He's only the ninth CEO in the history of the 148-year-old company.
- MacLennan is a departure from the traditional mode of Cargill boss. Most interestingly, he's worked elsewhere. MacLennan spent nine years at Cargill and then left for a stint at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray before returning to Cargill.
- The 54-year-old Boston native is intent freeing up communications at the global company, noting that Cargill has become too bureaucratic as iit has expanded to some 140,000 employees doing business in 65 countries.
Dive Insight:
Congratulations to Mr. MacLennan. We wish him luck. And he's likely to need it. He takes control of Cargill at a particularly complicated time -- amid debates over GMO crops and pending mergers. But we expect that MacLennan's relatively informal approach to leadership is exactly what Cargill needs. We remember visiting one of the company's offices a few years back and being struck with the similarity to the old, formal, bureaucratic IBM.
