Coty Bets on Becht

When the deals are this big, there's bound to be some doubters; but Coty Inc CEO Bart Becht can sense a good deal and will stay on board to see it through. Coty will pay $12.5 billion to Procter & Gamble in a move that makes the former the world's largest player in the fragrance market.


“As you know, there has been a lot of changes at Coty over the past 12 to 18 months … so the board asked me to stay to oversee the transaction,” Becht told Reuters after the P&G deal was announced last week.

The 58-year-old Dutchman said it was possible the group, founded in Paris and New York-based, could hire a new leader in the future but there was no time frame for that now. Becht, who jointly runs a Luxembourg holding company that is Coty's biggest shareholder, knows how to merge big businesses. He tied up Dutch-based Benckiser with Britain's Reckitt & Colman in 1999 and ran the combined chemicals and consumer goods group for more than a decade.
 

Under him, Reckitt Benckiser grew in value from 3 billion to 23.5 billion pounds, helped by two major acquisitions. Its shares rose more than four-fold over a decade.

Coty, the maker of Calvin Klein and Chloe perfumes, has at times proved a tougher proposition since Becht became chairman in 2011 to prepare for a stock market flotation. After its New York debut in 2013, the share price stagnated and at times was significantly lower until late autumn last year. Still, Becht's cuts to marketing departments and expenses in general lifted profits, and the stock eventually responded. It rose more than 60 percent in the eight months to June, when news broke that the P&G deal was afoot.