Labor & Employment

New York -- Richard Schulze, the founder of Best Buy, is recruiting a team of managers to run the company should his attempt to take the company private be successful, according to a report by Bloomberg.

“He is talking to people he trusts. There is a small group he’d like to have with him in righting the ship,” J.D. Wilson, senior VP of enterprise capabilities, said in an interview with Bloomberg.

Wilson said his position is being eliminated as part of Best Buy’s planned cutbacks.

Retired KPMG International chairman Timothy Flynn was named to the Walmart board of directors on Monday amid ongoing investigations into whether the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

San Francisco -- Williams-Sonoma has named Julie Whalen as permanent CFO. Whalen replaces Sharon McCollam, who retired in March. Whalen had been serving as acting CFO since McCollam retired.

Whalen joined Williams-Sonoma, which operates namesake stores, Pottery Barn, West Elm, and other stores, in 2001 and has served in a variety of positions, including treasurer.

ATLANTA — Coca-Cola has streamlined its operating structure and the senior leaders for those businesses, the company said.

William Kenneth Butler, COO of the 1,985 unit Aaron’s rent-to-own retail chain, received a lifetime achievement award from the Association of Progressive Rental Organizations (APRO).

Butler was selected as the 2012 recipient of the Ernie Tally Lifetime Achievement Award for an exemplary career spanning nearly four decades.

An “exclusive” report from Reuters this week suggests U.S. authorities are poised to put the retail industry under the microscope as a result of Walmart’s bribery scandal in Mexico.

New Orleans -- New Orleans has rolled out the red carpet in order to assure the first Costco location in the state.

The city council on Thursday unanimously approved nearly $6 million in financial incentives for a planned Costco in the New Orleans suburb of Carrollton.  
 
The $45 million, 148,000-sq.-ft. Costco marks the warehouse club operator’s state debut, to reportedly be followed by a second in the capital city of Baton Rouge.

The New Orleans store is slated to open late summer 2013.
 

Chicago -- A Thursday report compiled by Reuters and published in the Chicago Tribune said that U.S. authorities are weighing whether or not to launch a wide-scale investigation of the retail industry for bribery violations.

The news comes after Wal-Mart de Mexico came under scrutiny for potentially violating an anti-foreign bribery law, allegedly orchestrating bribes of $24 million to facilitate its growth in the region.