Nestlé boss sacked over affair
Swiss food company Nestlé has dismissed its CEO Laurent Freixe with immediate effect just one year after he took office. Freixe was dismissed for having an undisclosed 'romantic relationship' with a female employee who reported directly to him, according to the company. The board of directors saw this as a clear violation of Nestlé's code of conduct and internal guidelines.
Petty and humiliating
Le Point questions the board's decision:
“How could working with your partner, spouse or mistress be detrimental to performance? Pierre and Marie Curie worked together, and science had no reason to complain. The same applies to [chemist and politician] Sophie and Marcellin Berthelot, as well as fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé. And don't forget Victoria and David Beckham. So in a nutshell, the argument doesn't hold water. It smacks of tyranny, of a malice that is expressed through petty and humiliating methods.”
Romantic affairs can be toxic for companies
Companies would do well to prohibit relationships across hierarchical levels, argues La Tribune de Genève:
“Corporate codes of conduct serve a clear purpose. They are safeguards designed to prevent the abuse of power for personal gain and avoid conflicts of interest. Relationships between superiors and subordinates (almost always women) can create fairness issues, poison the atmosphere and undermine the team's success. In this case, it appears that the dismissal was due to the manager's deceit, which destroyed the relationship of trust with the board of directors.”
The entire board of directors should resign
Libération criticises the hypocrisy of the Swiss food giant's top management:
“Nestlé Chairman Paul Bulcke and the twelve other members of the board of directors who decided to dismiss Laurent Freixe would be well advised to apply this 'code of conduct' to themselves and resign immediately. Nestlé promotes its products with the slogan 'Good food, good life', which seems rather outdated ever since we learned that the multinational deliberately lied about the quality of its water brands Perrier, Contrex and Hépar. ... These products were contaminated with faecal bacteria at the source, and the company used illegal methods to filter them and then cynically sold them to millions of consumers in full knowledge of the facts.”