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A number of executives at the energy bar maker Clif Bar, including its CEO Sally Grimes, are set to leave the company, six months after it was acquired by snack giant Mondelez for nearly $3 billion, according to a Mondelez spokesperson.
Laurie Guzzinati, Mondelez’s vice president of corporate and government affairs for North America, confirmed that Grimes, a former Tyson Foods Group president who has served as Clif Bar’s CEO since May 2020, will be stepping down at the end of February.
Grimes’ successor, Alexandre “Alex” Zigliara, was named president of Clif Bar in an internal announcement on January 18, said Guzzinati, noting that “Alex has been leading the integration of the Clif business since we announced the acquisition last August.” Prior to his role at Clif Bar, Zigliara spent a year as senior vice president of strategic growth channels at Mondelez, and 17 years at Coca Cola, including as the president and general manager of its business in Italy and Albania.
“Sally is an incredible business leader. She and Alex have had a very collaborative relationship in supporting the integration and continue to work closely together,” said Guzzinati.
Clif Bar was founded in 1992 by entrepreneur and sports fanatic Gary Erickson. Erickson and his wife Kit Crawford owned 80% of the company and together walked away with an estimated $1.53 billion in cash from the sale, according to Forbes’ estimates. Employees owned the remaining 20% through an employee stock exchange plan, or ESOP, that the company introduced in 2010 as a retirement benefit–though it’s unclear how much employees actually received from the transaction due to layoffs prior to the sale.
There are “several other” Clif Bar veteran executives who are also transitioning out of the business, said Guzzinati, without disclosing the exact number of people. A new leadership team was announced internally January. “I would highlight that the leadership team moving forward for the business absolutely has a number of individuals who have been incredible talent within the Clif organization who will continue on to help carry the Clif business moving forward,” said Guzzinati.
As for the rest of the Clif Bar employees absorbed at the sale, Guzzinati said there will be “more to share” over the next couple of months. “Everyone today is continuing to work in their roles,” said Guzzinati. But as leaders are named, the company is working through “the future for the teams underneath and the structure underneath.”
In its 2022 annual earnings report on January 31, Mondelez, which owns a slew of popular snack brands like Cadbury, Ritz and Oreo, reported a nearly 10% increase in its net revenue, to $31.5 billion for the year. In a statement, Mondelez chairman and CEO Dirk van de Put credited the revenue increase to “continued strength in our emerging and developed markets as well as solid contributions from our recently acquired businesses.”
The Clif Bar acquisition added incremental net revenues of $361 million in 2022, including $204 million for the three months ending in December, according to the announcement. The announcement also highlighted a cost of $296 million related to the buyout of non-vested employee stock ownership plan shares.
Forbes previously reported on the tumult at Clif Bar in the years leading up to its sale, including layoffs impacting about one-third of the company’s corporate staff in February 2021. The timing of these layoffs meant that many who had been forced out or left in 2021—including some of its longest-serving employees—lost out on hundreds of thousands of dollars through the ESOP program when Mondelez bought Clif Bar in 2022.