Sabine Chalmers is first woman to join Coty board of directors

17-Apr-2017 - Last updated on 20-Apr-2017 at 14:40 GMT

Related tags Mergers and acquisitions

Just six months after becoming the world’s third largest beauty company (thanks to the acquisition of what had been P&G’s specialty beauty business) the personal care, fragrance, and cosmetics company has announced the addition of a woman to its previously all-male, eight-member board.

In late September 2016 Coty was added to the S&P 500 and just weeks later, formally completed its acquisition of the P&G brands. Since then the company has been getting a fair amount of press for not having any women on its board of directors; and then in February for the fact that company executives were planning to better its board, adding in one woman by July.

With this latest announcement, Coty has reached that objective.

A woman among men

Sabine Chalmers may be best known for her work as the chief legal officer at Anheuser-Busch. Though notably, she also serves as a director of Legal Momentum, an advocacy group founded in 1970 to advance the rights of women and girls.

Chalmers has held senior legal roles with Anheuser-Busch for not quite 10 years and is well regarded for her ability to manage large teams of legal professionals and compliance officers. It’s likely that her knowledge of international mergers and acquisitions as well as of corporate integration will be most valuable to Coty.

As Chalmers describes it on LinkedIn, she’s a “proud member of the management team that successfully completed the integration of Interbrew & Ambev to create InBev and the subsequent combinations with Anheuser-Busch, Grupo Modelo and SABMiller” –experience that will certainly be useful as Coty strives to maintain its new rank among the top global beauty companies.

In fact in the short press release announcing her appointment, Coty emphasizes Chalmers’ close involvement “in three of the world’s largest and most complex cross-border M&A transactions.”

Setting to work

In addition to a seat on the Coty board, Chalmers is also taking on the responsibility of serving on the company’s audit and finance committee.

“I am delighted to welcome Sabine to the Coty Board,” says chairman Bart Becht, in the company press release. “Her international experience as a senior leader in the global consumer goods industry will be a valuable addition to the broad range of experience already on our Board.”