Kroger C.E.O. Resigns After Board's Personal Conduct Investigation

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/business/kroger-ceo-resigns-rodney-
mcmullen.html

The grocery chain Kroger said on Monday that its chief executive, Rodney 
McMullen, had resigned after a board investigation of his personal 
conduct.

Mr. McMullen’s conduct was not related to the company’s financial 
performance or its operations, Kroger said in a news release, but it was 
“inconsistent” with the company’s business ethics policy. His actions did 
not involve any Kroger workers, the company said.

The management change comes as Kroger, which has headquarters in 
Cincinnati, has been dealing with the fallout from its collapsed merger 
with the grocery chain Albertsons.

Kroger said its board learned about “certain personal conduct” of Mr. 
McMullen’s on Feb. 21 and immediately sought outside counsel to lead an 
investigation. It said the actions in question were “unrelated to the 
business.”

The company appointed Ronald Sargent, its lead director, as interim chief 
executive while the company searches for a replacement. He also took over 
Mr. McMullen’s role as chairman. Mr. Sargent has been a director at the 
company since 2006 and said he had spent summers in college working at its 
stores.

“I plan to be a steady, but active, hand in the execution of our 
strategy,” Mr. Sargent said in a statement.

Mr. McMullen had worked at Kroger for more than four decades. He started 
in 1978 as a part-time stock clerk in Lexington, Ky., was elected to its 
board of directors in 2003 and was appointed chief executive in 2014. He 
was named chairman in 2015.

Kroger announced the management shake-up days before the company reports 
its fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday.

The last few months have been a tumultuous time for Kroger. After federal 
and state regulators blocked Kroger’s $25 billion bid for Albertsons in 
December, Albertsons sued Kroger. The deal would have been the biggest 
grocery store merger in U.S. history and would have created a $200 billion 
company with 5,000 supermarkets across the country.

The Federal Trade Commission sued to halt the deal, arguing that it would 
reduce competition and raise prices at the expense of workers and 
consumers. Judge Adrienne Nelson of the U.S. District Court in Oregon 
sided with federal regulators, and a state court in Washington blocked the 
deal in a ruling made about an hour later.

The next day, Albertsons said it had backed out of the merger and filed a 
lawsuit seeking billions of dollars in damages against Kroger, accusing it 
of not using its “best efforts” to secure approval from regulators. Kroger 
has disputed Albertsons’ claims.


-- 
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