USA – International Flavors & Fragrances Chairman and CEO Andreas Fibig has announced that he will retire, ending his successful 7-year stint at the company which is now the largest flavour and fragrance company in the world.
Without an able successor at the moment, Fibig is expected to stay in his position until a replacement is named by the company’s board of directors in early 2022.
Once a successor has been identified, the Veteran executive who has been with IFF for more than 10 years now will remain at IFF for a short time to ensure a seamless transition.
His departure makes him the second high-ranking IFF executive to retire in a month after executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Rustom Jilla announced his departure on Sept. 16.
News of Jilla’s departure as CFO came at the same time the company announced the hire of his replacement: Glenn Richter.
Richter, IFF’s new CFO, has nearly three decades of experience, providing financial oversight to multinational companies. He comes to IFF from financial services firm TIAA, where he was CFO.
A new company in need of new ideas
After a year of monumental change for IFF — crowned by the company’s February $26.2 billion megamerger with the former DuPont Nutrition and Biosciences — IFF is practically a different company than it was a year ago.
It’s a behemoth in the ingredients space with leadership positions in taste, texture, scent, nutrition, enzymes, cultures, soy proteins, and probiotics.
The reformed IFF has also performed well in terms of sales post-merger and in its recent earnings call, Fibig noted that the legacy business units of both IFF and DuPont grew in the single digits.
Last month, the company updated its guidance to predict full-year 2021 sales growth of 8% and an adjusted operating EBITDA margin of about 21.5%.
But in spite of the merger and its following successes, IFF has not been seen as performing to its potential.
There is considerable optimism for IFF’s future under a new CEO. |It is believed that a new chief executive will bring new ideas and concepts to IFF as it molds into a bigger and more influential company in the space.
Even as the search for the next CEO starts, the company is already seeing a lot of changes at its top leadership, which could change the way the company does business.
The Nourish division, which handles much of IFF’s ingredients business, has a new president as of Sept. 1. in the name Nicolas Mirzayantz, who has had a 33-year tenure at IFF.
The Scent division is also under the hands of a new president: Christophe de Villeplee, who’s worked at IFF for more than two decades and had been the company’s president of global consumer fragrances.
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