• GE CFO Keith Sherin was promoted to vice chairman. Finance chief for the past decade, Sherin has been with GE for 26 years. Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt said Sherin is “one of the most talented and respected CFOs in the world.”
• International food and consumer producer Unilever bypassed internal candidates and hired General Mills CFO James Lawrence as its own finance chief. Lawrence was CFO at General Mills since 1998 and also served as finance chief at Northwest Airlines. General Mills tapped current senior vice president of financial operations Don Mulligan to replace Lawrence.
• Susan G. Komen for the Cure has appointed Kevin Speirits as its chief financial officer. Speirits will oversee the finances at the world’s largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists at a time when it is looking to invest another $1 billion in breast cancer research and outreach programs. He was formerly vice president of corporate finance for Freescale Semiconductor.
• Electro Scientific Industries CFO John Metcalf will resign from his position at the end of September. Metcalf is also senior vice president of the company, which makes photonic and laser systems for micro-engineering applications. The company did not state why Metcalf was leaving. ESI will begin a search to fill Metcalf’s shoes immediately.
• Mark Hahn, a former senior manager at Ernst & Young, has been appointed CFO of GigaBeam Corp. Hahn most recently served as CFO of Build Links and was also CFO at Charles & Colvard.
• Longtime Hertz Global Holdings CFO and executive vice president Paul Siracusa will retire from the rental car company at the end of August. Hertz has appointed staff vice president and treasurer Elyse Douglas as interim CFO. Siracusa, who stepped on board at Hertz in 1969 and has overseen the finances for the past 10 years, has agreed to act as a consultant for the next year. He was also CFO of Hertz Europe and held leadership positions in the finance division of Hertz’s U.S. rental car operations.
• Marketing giant Harte-Hanks has promoted its current CFO Dean Blythe to president of the $1.2 billion company. Blythe will also take on the role of CEO in early 2008, succeeding Richard Hochhauser, whose term expires in 2008. Blythe has been CFO since 2003 and has been with Harte-Hanks since 2001. He will continue to serve as interim CFO until the company finds a replacement.
• Luxury clothing company Dussault Apparel has appointed Jamie Arthur Lewin its CFO. Lewin was previously the finance chief for Abenteuer Resources Corp. Robert Mintak, the company’s temporary CFO, will serve as COO of the clothing line.
• Ronald Hutchison, vice president and CFO for Interstate Bakeries Corp., will move to oversee the finances at AmeriCold, which provides temperature-controlled food distribution services. Hutchinson was CFO of the wholesale bakers, whose brands include Hostess, Wonder, and Marie Callender’s, since 2004. He also was the senior vice president and chief restructuring officer at Aurora Foods and led a successful bankruptcy for Kmart Corp. from 2002 to 2003. Hutchinson will replace interim CFO Steve Mortensen.
• Robert Van Nostrand will join the biopharmaceutical laboratory AGI Dermatics to serve as the company’s CFO and executive vice president. Nostrand was CFO for OSI Pharmaceuticals for 10 years. He was most recently senior vice president and chief compliance officer for the company.
• Goldman Sachs and UBS veteran Theodore Botts will be the new CFO at Stereo Vision Entertainment. Botts spent 14 years at Goldman Sachs and 12 years at UBS. He has been providing consulting services to Stereo Vision Entertainment since 2004 and managed Kensington Gate Capital, his private financial advisory firm, since 2000.
• Men’s hair care and grooming company Knockouts Haircuts for Men has appointed Stephen Welker as CFO. Welker will join the Texas-based franchise with a background as a research analyst at an investment firm.
• G. Leo Casey will join the IP-based voice solutions provider Envox Worldwide to serve as its finance chief. Casey previously served as CFO at Intrusic, Formation Systems, and the Open Software Foundation.