TNT appoints van Dalen as CFO
hired a chemicals industry veteran as chief financial officer.
The mail group named Henk van Dalen, managing board member responsible for finance at DSM, the speciality chemicals and life science company, to succeed Jan Haars, who leaves TNT on March 31.
Mr van Dalen has spent his entire 29-year career with DSM, which started life as a state-owned mining company. He joins TNT at a time of unusual turbulence for the post and parcel group.
Last week it drew a line under a three-year struggle to lift profits in logistics, saying it would sell the bulk of a low-margin division which generates Euros 3.4bn (Dollars 4.1bn) in annual sales, more than 25 per cent of total revenues. In a gesture to shareholders, it is returning Euros 1bn in a share repurchase scheme.
Those moves come amid speculation about longer-term prospects for the company, which has been the centre of takeover speculation and worries about the financial impact of the tax probe.
Cornelius Geber, a German private equity investor, said in November he was putting together a consortium to bid for TNT. That came weeks after the company was linked to possible interest from UPS, the US postal operator.
Mr van Dalen was part of a team that switched the focus of DSM from petro-chemicals to nutrition products, performance materials and pharmaceutical ingredients. It had just embarked on a new five-year strategy, focused on China and increasing innovation.
Mr Haars’ “amicable” decision to leave TNT followed a “difference of opinion over management style” with Peter Bakker, TNT chief executive.
