12-year CEO at PepsiCo quitting

Nooyi led drive for healthier fare

Nooyi will step down as the chief executive of PepsiCo this year, ending a 12-year run in which she sought to refashion the drinks and snacks giant into a purveyor of healthier foods and beverages.

Her decision to step down in favor of Ramon Laguarta, a 22-year veteran of the company, is the latest in a series of resignations by women at the helm of major companies, depleting the already thin ranks of women business leaders.

Nooyi presided over a significant expansion of PepsiCo’s business, with revenue growing to $63.5 billion last year, from $35 billion in 2006, while the company’s share price nearly doubled in that time.

Her tenure leading the company was characterized by a focus on shifting it from sugary soft drinks, which were less and less profitable.

Under Nooyi, PepsiCo diversified its mix of products away from fatty snacks. It now offers customers baked chips and water brands such as Lifewtr and Bubly, and it recently ac-

quired Bare Foods, a maker of baked fruit and vegetable snacks. Since 2006, the percentage of revenue coming from healthier food and beverages at PepsiCo has climbed to 50 percent, from 38 percent.

In many ways, she was ahead of the curve with that shift. From 2014 to 2018, U.S. snack sales rose 12 percent, with a large portion of that growth coming from healthy or organic foods, according to Nielsen Retail Measurement Services.

Several companies in recent years have sought to capitalize on that, from Campbell Soup completing a $4.9 billion deal for Snyder’s-Lance, the maker of Cape Cod potato chips, to Hershey buying

Amplify Snack Brands, which makes SkinnyPop Popcorn, for $1.6 billion.

Nooyi is the latest in a series of female chief executives who have left major businesses. In recent months, those have included Denise Morrison at Campbell Soup, Margo Georgiadis at the toy company Mattel, Sheri McCoy at Avon, Irene Rosenfeld at Mondelez and Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard.

Although there are twice as many women now leading Fortune 500 companies as when Nooyi took over at PepsiCo — she was then the 11th woman to lead a major company — the number of women in such roles has fallen 25 percent this year.

Experts say that decline is tied not only to the choices of individual executives but also to a wider culture that is biased against women in the

workplace. Issues range from women making greater use of family leave and adapting their careers to balance childrearing, to being viewed differently because they do not fit the mold of the leaders, overwhelmingly men, who preceded them.

Nooyi, 62, is to be replaced as chief executive by Laguarta on Oct. 3 but will remain as PepsiCo’s chairman until early 2019, the company said.

Born in Chennai, in southern India, Nooyi joined PepsiCo in 1994 and held a series of strategy roles before becoming its chief financial officer in 2000. She took over as PepsiCo’s first female chief executive in October 2006.

Nooyi was notable for her willingness to speak on political issues. A public supporter of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign, she said soon after the election

that she found herself having to “answer a lot of questions, from my daughters, from my employees — they were all in mourning.”

She also saw off a campaign by billionaire activist investor Nelson Peltz to break up PepsiCo, agreeing in 2015 to appoint an adviser to Peltz’s investment firm to the company’s board of directors. Peltz had asserted that investors would benefit if PepsiCo spun off its beverages unit from its better-performing snacks business.

Laguarta’s appointment continues a tradition of PepsiCo finding leaders from within its ranks. A native of Barcelona, Spain, Laguarta, 54, was previously the head of the company’s operations in Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, and before that president of its eastern Europe division.