Yesterday, SBUX announced that Troy Alstead, senior vice president, Global Finance will succeed current CFO Pete Bocian at the end of the month. Mr. Bocian is leaving the company to join Hewlett-Packard, as chief administrative officer.

The trend for management turnover at SBUX is not good. Over the past year, as you can see from the details provided to me by First Rain, there have been a significant number of high levels of departures from SBUX. Importantly, the First Rain Data does not include the fact that SBUX’s own advertising agency fired the company! Do you think Howard Schultz is difficult to work for?

Two thoughts; First, it was nice of Mr. Bocian to postpone his announcement until after the big internal conference in New Orleans last week. Second, I can completely understand that he does not want to face the music of telling the street that his projection for positive 2-3% same-store sales growth in 2009 is a tad aggressive!
Management Turnover over the past 12-months (provided by First Rain)