Best Buy chief giving up helm

Joly will turn over reins to company financial officer Barry

Hubert Joly in June will turn over leadership of Best Buy to Corie Barry, currently chief financial and transformation officer, after leading a turnaround lauded by Wall Street and employees.

He will become executive chairman, helping with external and government relations, leadership development and really anything Barry asks him to do, he said Monday.

"Leading this iconic Minnesota company has been the greatest honor and delight of my professional career," said Joly, 59.

The Richfield, Minn.-based company already has met financial goals set for fiscal 2021, and Joly is a new grandfather, which he said made him decide this was the right time to put his succession plan in place.

When Best Buy lays out strategic plans for the next phase of the company at an investors day in September, Joly said he wanted Wall Street to see the leaders who will see that plan through.

Barry, having been promoted to executive vice president of transformation and finance in November, has been intimately involved in crafting the next steps in Best Buy's growth. So has Mike Mohan, who after the company's annual meeting on June 11 will add president to his chief operating title.

"Nearly seven years ago, the board made a stunningly good decision when they asked a Frenchman with no retail experience to save this company," Barry wrote in a letter being sent to employees Monday morning.

"Perhaps without knowing it, Hubert had been preparing for that moment all his life, and he brought to the job his remarkable brain, boundless energy and deep passion," said Barry, 43, who will become the company's first female chief executive officer. "Like all of you, I will forever be grateful to him for leading us during such dark days and then helping us find a path to true transformation and rebirth."

Joly, who has several jackets sporting the Best Buy pin on the back of his office door, is known for fist bumps and high-fives when he visits stores and for his enthusiasm during corporate meetings.

"Joly brought financial rigor to the business," Piper Jaffray's Peter Keith said in January. "He brought a great, energetic, hardworking personality for people to get behind."

Joly said Barry has been instrumental in his decision-making. "This has been the best professional relationship I've had," he said. "She is a very human, authentic, purposeful leader."

And her "wealth of experience at Best Buy is unmatched," he said.

Besides two years at Deloitte and Touche just after graduating from the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., Barry has worked her entire career at Best Buy.

"I could not have been more honored and humbled" at being elevated to CEO, Barry said in an interview. Her experience -- and all the employees she has met from store associates to merchants and C-suite peers -- convinced her that she was ready to take the top leadership role. Plus, she would be becoming CEO at a time of momentum, "a luxury."

Business on 04/16/2019

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