LITTLE ROCK — Wal-Mart on Tuesday named new presidents for its U.S. operations and for a unit that focuses on online sales.
Eduardo Castro-Wright, 55 and a current Wal-Mart vice chairman, will move to California to serve as president and chief executive officer of the online-focused Global.com and Global Sourcing, the Bentonville-based retailer announced. Chief Operating Officer Bill Simon, 50, meanwhile, has been promoted to president and CEO of Wal-Mart U.S.
Walmart President and CEO Mike Duke called Castro-Wright a "visionary thinker" who will help the company build "the next generation Wal-Mart" on a global scale. He will begin his new duties Aug. 1.
"I am excited to take on this new role to help drive the next generation of value creation for Wal-Mart and to be closer to my family," Castro-Wright said in a statement. "I am committed to building the leading global e-commerce and multi-channel business and to truly leveraging our global sourcing to deliver value for our customer."
Simon, a former senior vice president of Brinker International and Secretary of the Florida Department of Management Services, starts his new position immediately.
"Bill is a strong leader who has made a positive difference from his first day at Wal-Mart," Duke said in a statement. "He's been responsible for successfully running more than 3,700 stores and leading 1.3 million associates in the U.S. Bill transformed the customer experience at Walmart through faster service, a friendlier shopping environment and cleaner stores. He also helped develop and launch our game-changing $4 prescription drug program and has continued to drive innovation and improvement throughout Walmart U.S. He is a talented strategist and an excellent people manager with strong execution skills."
Also Tuesday, Wal-Mart hired three banks to arrange meetings with bond investors in Japan, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
Bank of America Corp., Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. are arranging talks in Tokyo on July 15, said the person, who declined to be identified as the information is private.
Wal-Mart last year became the first U.S. company to sell Samurai bonds since Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed, and no other U.S. companies have sold the yen-denominated securities in Japan since, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Wal-Marsold 100 billion yen ($1.13 billion) of Samurai bonds on July 29 including 83.1 billion yen of five-year, 1.49 percent notes and 16.9 billion yen of floating-rate notes priced to yield 0.6 percentage point more than the six-month London interbank offered rate for yen, the data show.
Samurai bonds are yen-denominated notes sold in Japan by overseas borrowers.
Information for this article was contributed by Bloomberg News.