Wal Mart Shifts CEO and Continues Its High Growth Internationally

by mazevedo | November 21, 2008 at 03:36 pm

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Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, unexpectedly announced the retirement of Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott after almost nine years at the helm, replacing him with overseas chief Mike Duke.

Big news in the business sector today, thats right Wal-Mart which is set to become this years top performer among the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average has just very unexpectedly changed its CEO. Wal-Mart which is highly profiting and aqcuiring new customers during this financial crisis will have the big job of gathering customer fidelity as the crisis is over. Duke is set to be the 4th CEO of Wal-Mart ever since the company first started in 1962.

Overseas Wal-Mart Continues Its Rise

Talking to analysts in June, Duke said Wal-Mart’s overseas revenue will exceed $100 billion for the first time in the year through January, spurred by gains in Brazil, Asia and other markets on top of last year’s sales of $90.6 billion.

International sales may advance 9.3 percent in the year starting in February, outpacing a companywide increase of 5.5 percent, Gregory Melich, a Morgan Stanley analyst in New York, wrote in an Oct. 30 note to clients.

What do you think about Wal-Mart's change in CEO?

“Duke seems to be the right pick,” said Richard Hastings, a consumer strategist at Global Hunter Securities LLC of Newport, Beach, California. Internal promotions make sense, “especially those from the transport and logistics side of the business, the center of the company’s extraordinary power and competitive advantage.”