Online business magazine Fortune.com has published the next article about Avon:
When beauty giant Coty (coty, +1.67%) made an unsolicited $10.7 billion for Avon Products (avp, +3.14%) in April 2012, the direct seller’s board was adamant shareholders would be better off letting incoming CEO Sheri McCoy fix a very damaged company. It proved to be one of the biggest blunders in M&A history.
Fast forward five years, Avon’s stock market value is down to $1.3 billion and McCoy is on her way out in March, having failed to improve the company by almost any measure. The number of sales representatives, iconically known as ‘Avon Ladies’, has shrunk in all but one of the years of her rein and the declines have continued into 2015.
Avon has racked up about $1.8 billion in losses and last year sold off its North American business to private equity firm Cerberus, a huge blow for a company founded in 1886 in New York when a door-to-door bookseller found that the perfumes he mixed himself were popular with his customers.
Ultimately, McCoy was trying to fix an unimaginable mess at a company with operations all over the world, and proved slow to react to market changes such as the