ANN ARBOR, Mich., Aug. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Borders Group, Inc. (NYSE: BGP) today announced plans to elect five new Board members at the company's September 17 Board meeting. The five new Directors will replace five existing Directors -- Don Campbell, Joel Cohen, Amy Lane, Brian Light and Larry Pollock -- who will step down from the Board at that time, as previously announced.
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The five new directors are: Paul J. Brown, President, Global Brands and Commercial Services, Hilton Hotels Corp.; Ronald J. Floto, President, FLT International LLC; Michael Grossman, Chief Executive Officer, Tempo Payments; Dan Rose, Vice President, Business Development and Monetization, Facebook and Timothy V. Wolf, Chief Integration Officer, MillerCoors LLC. They join Board Chairman Mick McGuire, Borders Group Chief Executive Officer Ron Marshall and Lead Independent Director Mike Archbold on the Board.
Brown, 42, has been in his current position with Hilton Hotels Corp. since 2008. Prior to that, he was with Expedia Inc. for four years, most recently serving as President, Expedia North America and Expedia Inc. Partner Services Group. From 2001 through 2005, Brown was a Partner and Leader of the Global Travel and Hospitality Practice for McKinsey & Co. Earlier in his career, he was Senior Vice President of Brand Services for Intercontinental Hotels Group; a Manager with the Boston Consulting Group, Inc. and a Senior Consultant with Andersen Consulting. He received a bachelor's degree in management from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1989 and earned a master's of business administration degree from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University in 1994.
Floto, 65, founded FLT International in 2007. For 10 years prior, he was Chief Executive Officer and a Director with Dairy Farm International Holdings Ltd., a $6.7 billion Asian retailer that operates more than 4,600 locations including supermarkets, health and beauty stores, convenience stores, home furnishing stores and restaurants. From 1994 through 1997, he was President of Kmart Corporation's Super K Division, and earlier spent nine years as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Kash N' Karry Food Stores. Prior to that, he was with Jewel Companies, Inc. for 12 years, including three years as President of Jewel's Buttrey Food Stores. From 1971 through 1973, Floto served as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of Transportation with the U.S. Department of Transportation. He currently serves on the board of directors of Dairy Farm International, Food World, Ltd. of India and Health & Glow, Ltd. of India. Floto earned a bachelor's degree in engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1965 and a master's of business administration degree from Harvard Business School in 1971.
Grossman, 44, has been the Chief Executive Officer of Tempo Payments since 2006. In 1996, he founded LiveCapital, where he served as Chief Executive Officer for 10 years, and prior to that, he was Group Project Manager, Quicken with Intuit. Earlier, he was a Brand Manager with Johnson & Johnson Co., a Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Rim Pacific and an Associate with McKinsey & Company. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University in 1986 and a juris doctor degree from Harvard Law School in 1990.
Rose, 36, is Vice President, Business Development and Monetization for Facebook, a post he has held since 2006. At Facebook, he is responsible for worldwide strategic partnerships and mergers and acquisitions as well as marketing strategy for Facebook's advertising products. Before joining Facebook, Rose was with Amazon.com for seven years, where he held various business development and management positions and helped incubate and develop the Kindle. Rose earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from Harvard University in 1994.
Wolf, 56, has been Chief Integration Officer for MillerCoors LLC since 2008. Prior to his current post, he was Chief Financial Officer for Coors Brewing Company for 10 years, and then, for over three years, was Global Chief Financial Officer for Molson Coors Brewing Company. Prior to that, Wolf was Senior Vice President of Human Resources for Hyatt Hotels Corp. and was with Walt Disney Company for four years in a variety of financial leadership positions including Senior Vice President, Administration for Euro Disney. From 1980 through 1989, Wolf was with PepsiCo, Inc., where he served as Controller, Taco Bell Corporation, among other executive leadership positions there. Wolf serves on the board of directors for Xcel Energy, Inc. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1974 from Harvard College and a master's of business administration degree in finance in 1976 from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.
"On behalf of the company and the board, I want to thank Don, Joel, Amy, Brian and Larry for their years of service and many contributions," said Marshall. "We appreciate that they remained on the Board and continued to serve as we conducted a comprehensive search for the new Board members. Due to their continued commitment, the transition is a smooth one. We are pleased with the diversity of skills being added to our Board and plan to bring on additional directors with specific expertise. We look forward to the contributions that all of the new Directors will make over the coming years."
About Borders Group, Inc.
Headquartered in Ann Arbor, Mich., Borders Group, Inc. is a leading retailer of books, music and movies with approximately 25,000 employees. Through it subsidiaries, the company operates more than 1,000 stores primarily under the Borders((R)) and Waldenbooks((R)) brand names and offers online shopping through Borders.com. For more information about the company, visit www.borders.com/investors.
Safe Harbor Statement
This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. One can identify these forward-looking statements by the use of words such as "projects," "expect," "estimated," "look toward," "going forward," "continuing," "maintain," "plan," "returning," "guidance," "goal," "will," "may," "intend," "anticipates," and other words of similar meaning. One can also identify them by the fact that they do not relate strictly to historical or current facts. These statements are likely to address matters such as the company's future financial condition and performance (including earnings per share, gross margins and inventory turns, liquidity, same-store sales, cost reduction initiatives, and anticipated capital expenditures and depreciation and amortization amounts) and its cost reduction initiatives and the benefits thereof, as well as the addition of new Board members. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and plans to differ materially from those included in the company's forward- looking statements.
These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, consumer demand for the company's products, particularly during the holiday season, which is believed to be related to general economic and geopolitical conditions, competition and other factors; the availability of adequate capital-including vendor credit-to fund the company's operations and to carry out its strategic plans; the performance of the company's information technology systems and the development of improvements to the systems necessary to implement the company's strategic plan and, with respect to the addition of new Board members, the ability to identify and attract qualified individuals.
The company's periodic reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission contain more detailed discussions of these and other risk factors that could cause actual results and plans to differ materially from those included in the forward-looking statements, and those discussions are incorporated herein by reference. The company does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements.
