Dive Brief:
- Post Holdings, owner of cereal brands such as Grape-Nuts and Alpha Bits, will promote chief financial officer Robert V. Vitale to chief executive officer. Vitale will assume the role next month.
- CEO William P. Stiritz will remain at the company in the newly created role of executive chairman.
- Post also announced a reorganization of the company into three units.
Dive Insight:
Post appears unwilling to wait for death as the cereal business dwindles. The reorganization and the arrival of the new CEO come amid a wave of acquisitions such as the $2.45 billion deal to buy Michael Foods earlier this year.
One notable item in the news about the reorganization is how those three units will be constructed. One is called consumer brands and will include the cereal brands and the Powerbar and Musashi brands purchased in February. A private label unit will include private label businesses. But the third unit, dubbed Michael Foods, will include the potato and egg businesses from that deal and Dakota Growers Pasta Co.
It may not be immediately clear why potatoes, eggs, and pasta brands need a unit that is separate from cereals and nutrition bars, but it is certain that Post Holdings has suddenly become too big to manage as a single unified group. And in world where cereal sales are falling, that's probably a good thing.
