THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. ***** Tuesday, July 30, 2019 |B5
Newell Brands Inc., the
struggling consumer-goods
conglomerate that makes ev-
erything from Sharpie pens to
Graco strollers, has picked an
outsider as its new chief exec-
utive.
Ravi Saligram, who was
CEO of OfficeMax until its
merger with Office Depot, will
take over on Oct. 2, the com-
pany said.
Mr. Saligram has since 2014
been CEO of Ritchie Bros. Auc-
tioneers Inc. but said in June
he planned to step down in
October.
Mr. Saligram, 62 years old,
will inherit a company that is
in the midst of a restructuring
and seeking a new strategy to
sell its household products in
a marketplace where major re-
tail partners like Toys “R” Us
have disappeared. His biggest
shareholders will include an
activist investor.
“This is no job for a rookie
CEO,” said Jim Craigie, a New-
ell director and chairman of
the board’s nominating and
governance committee. “It’s a
tough assignment and we
looked for someone who
checked all the boxes.”
Newell needs to stem losses
and improve morale, he said.
Mr. Saligram demonstrated an
ability to turn around money-
losing businesses, transition to
online sales and handle far-
flung operations during ten-
ures at OfficeMax, Ritchie
Bros. and other companies,
Mr. Craigie said.
Mr. Saligram currently
holds a board seat at Church &
Dwight Co.
Newell has reported weak
sales and missed targets since
a $15 billion deal combined
the company with Jarden
Corp., the owner of brands like
Yankee Candle and Mr. Coffee
machines.
BYCARALOMBARDO
ANDSHARONTERLEP
Newell
Chooses
Outsider
As CEO
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CUSTOMERS
HAVE SPOKEN:
to fight its way to the com-
pany’s front door, winning
permission from a Delaware
federal judge last year to seize
shares in Citgo’s U.S. parent
company.
Crystallex, which partnered
with Venezuela on a gold-min-ing venture that soured in
2011, has said it wants to put
those shares up for sale, po-
tentially wresting control of
Citgo, Venezuela’s largest
known external asset.
Any sale would require ap-
proval from the U.S. TreasuryDepartment, according to
Monday’s decision.
Led by Juan Guaidó, Vene-
zuela’s opposition government
took effective control of Citgo
in February from the ruling
leftist regime and had urged
U.S. courts to protect the com-BUSINESS NEWS
year. It now patches security
vulnerabilities much more of-
ten and uses automated tools
to reduce the risk of employee
mistakes.
Equifax so far has spent
around $1.44 billion recovering
from the cyberattack, including
data security and technology
investments and legal costs, ac-
cording to its most recent fi-
nancial statement.
Top executives hope the
moves will make Equifax a cy-
bersecurity model.
“To truly transform into an
industry leader, we must em-
bed security into everything we
do,” said Mark Begor, Equifax’s
chief executive, at a Senate
hearing this spring. Mr. Begor
joined as CEO in April 2018.
The company announced the
retirement of its chief executiveand chief information and secu-
rity officers shortly after dis-
closing the breach in Septem-
ber 2017.
“We want to be a force for
good,” Jamil Farshchi, who
joined as chief information se-
curity officer in February 2018,
told WSJ Pro Cybersecurity in
a series of interviews before
the company moved to settle
lawsuits and investigations last
week. If approved by a federal
judge, the settlement requires
Equifax to make further tech-
nology improvements and pay
as much as $700 million to
consumers, federal regulators
and states.
Equifax now assesses prog-
ress on security projects more
closely and sends more detailed
reports to the board, according
to Mr. Farshchi. Reviews frominternal audits, outside firms
and regulators feed into the
board reports, he said.
The company plans to make
its board-assessment method
public and it is promoting it to
other businesses through the
World Economic Forum and the
National Association of Corpo-
rate Directors, he said. Repre-
sentatives for these organiza-
tions declined to comment.
Some security experts ex-
pressed skepticism that Equifax
could become a cybersecurity
benchmark.
“Probably the biggest chal-
lenge is to sustain that burst of
interest to actually make some
changes,” said Steve Weber, di-
rector of the Center for Long-
Term Cybersecurity at the Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley.
Experts say the companyfaces lengthy, expensive work
to overcome entrenched behav-
ior that made it vulnerable in
the first place.
The breach “was entirely
preventable. Equifax failed to
react with common sense or
put the public interest first,”
Pennsylvania Attorney General
Josh Shapiro told reporters last
week as the settlement was an-
nounced.
Hackers accessed Equifax’s
systems through a flaw in the
open-source web software
Apache Struts that Equifax
didn’t fix despite government
warnings.
Since then, the company has
sought to create processes to
hold executives accountable for
security and to require all em-
ployees to follow basic data
precautions.EquifaxInc. wants to teach
other companies how to secure
data.
Two years after a breach ex-
posed sensitive information
about nearly 150 million con-
sumers, executives hope that
more than $1 billion in invest-
ments and a new leadership
team will turn the credit-re-
porting firm into an unex-
pected cybersecurity leader.
The company has increased
cybersecurity oversight by top
executives and keeps its board
better informed about security
projects. It allocated an extra
$1.25 billion for technology and
security investments between
2018 and 2020 and hired
around 1,000 employees in IT
and cybersecurity over the pastBYCATHERINESTUPPEquifax Pitches Focus on Security
pany from creditors.
The opposition’s lawyers
can ask the Third Circuit to re-
hear the case. If they lose,
they can then appeal to the
U.S. Supreme Court.
But if Monday’s ruling
stands, the Trump administra-
tion may have to choose be-
tween curtailing creditors’
collateral rights or allowing
Citgo to slip from the opposi-
tion’s grasp.
A Crystallex spokesman
said it reached out in recent
months to the opposition,
hoping to negotiate “a fair set-
tlement that would compen-
sate Crystallex for its property
and preserve the value of
Citgo for the Venezuelan peo-
ple.” Representatives for the
opposition didn’t respond to
requests for comment. Citgo
also didn’t respond.
Citgo remains a flashpoint
in the political struggle grip-
ping Caracas, where President
Nicolás Maduro has kept his
hold on key state institutions
and the military despite food
shortages, rampant hyperinfla-
tion and international
criticism over human-rights
abuses.A U.S. appeals court said
Venezuela’s stake in U.S.-based
oil refinerCitgo Petroleum
Corp. could be seized to sat-
isfy a judgment against the
country, dealing a blow to its
U.S.-backed opposition gov-
ernment.
The U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit on Mon-
day sided with Crystallex
International Corp., a defunct
Canadian gold miner that has
laid claim to Citgo’s valuable
Gulf Coast crude refineries to
collect on part of a $1.4 billion
debt.
The ruling further clouds
the future of Citgo, which
has considered filing for
bankruptcy to sort out com-
peting claims from creditors.
As Venezuela’s largest seizable
asset in the U.S., Citgo is an
obvious source of compensa-
tion for bondholders and mul-
tinational companies that are
owed billions of dollars and
haven’t been paid during the
country’s lengthy economic
meltdown.
Of all the claimants circling
Citgo, Crystallex was the firstBYANDREWSCURRIACreditor Can Seize Venezuela’s Citgo Stake, Court Rules
The oil company has considered bankruptcy to sort out claims from creditors seeking its assets.SAUL LOEB/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESNY