"We are creating businesses of more significant scale," DuPont interim CEO-Chairman Edward D. Breen said today in this statement, explaining why DuPont is folding four of its businesses into two. He said DuPont will combine Packaging & Industrial Polymers and Performance Polymers into a single unified "DuPont Performance Materials" group, and add Protection Technologies to Building Innovations to form "DuPont Protection Solutions," effective Jan. 1.
Breen, the former Tyco and General Instruments CEO who joined the board earlier this year and stepped in to run DuPont after CEO-Chair Ellen Kullman resigned on the eve of a disappointing profit report last month, has pledged to accelerate administrative and finance cost cuts -- while continuing to support an effective sales force and productive research and development -- at the DuPont Co., which is based in suburban Wilmington, Del.
Patrick E. Linder, a chemist and 19-year DuPont veteran who headed performance polymers, will lead DuPont Performance Materials as one of the six DuPont business segments. Rose Lee, an engineer and former Saint-Gobain executive who joined DuPont in January and was put in charge of protection technologies last month, will head DuPont Protection Solutions as a part of DuPont's Safety and Protection segment (which also includes one other business group, Sustainable Solutions).
The company has not announced any new assignments for the two executives displaced by the combination, Packaging & Industrial Polymers chief William J. Harvey and Building Innovations boss Rajeev Vaidya.
Breen began his years as Tyco boss by firing dozens of executives left over from his predecessor Ed Kozlowski's administration. But, meeting with shareholders last week, Breen warned against expecting he will run DuPont the way he did Tyco, which he eventually broke into several separate companies.
While a DuPont breakup has in the past been championed by Nelson Peltz, boss at activist shareholder and major DuPont investor Trian Global Management, and all options are still on the table pending review, Breen said businesses can also grow by boosting new products, as General Instrument Corp. did when he ran the company in the 1990s.