Marketing

New York -- Office Depot announced that Kevin Peters had resigned from his role as president of the retailer’s North American division, effective immediately.

Top food executives at Walmart are presumably in the crosshairs of Safeway recruiters now that longtime chairman and CEO Steve Burd has announced his retirement.

Detroit, Mich. — Greeting card publisher Avanti Press has named Kari Knowlton as its new director of business development.

Founded by Rick Ruffner in 1980, Avanti Press publishes the Avanti and A*Press greeting card collections. The Detroit-based publisher’s everyday and seasonal card collections are carried in leading regional and national retail outlets as well as independent retail outlets throughout the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and other countries worldwide.

BELLEVUE, Wash. — Coinstar, a leading provider of automated retail solutions, has appointed its current CFO J. Scott Di Valerio as new CEO, effective April 1. At that time, Di Valerio will also be appointed to the Coinstar board of directors.

Di Valerio succeeds Paul Davis, who is retiring on March 31, and will remain a member of the board until then.

Di Valerio has been CFO at Coinstar since 2010, and has overseen Coinstar's corporate information technology and supply chain functions.

Kansas City-based advertising agency Barkley was hired by Big Lots to help the closeout retailer with a broad range of marketing and brand strategy initiatives.

Barkley will provide Big Lots with full-service advertising and marketing duties including brand strategy, and broadcast, print and in-store executions. Barkley will also partner with Big Lots on web strategy and execution.

Hyphen Solutions has appointed Ken Pinto, a former supply chain executive for Toll Bros. and other national home builders, as its VP supply chain.

Pinto brings 21 years of supply chain management expertise to Hyphen's real estate and software management team. He most recently served as the director of supply chain at Toll Bros. and has held similar positions at Standard Pacific and Pulte Homes. Pinto also heads the Supply Chain Benchmark Group, which is a coalition of the purchasing leaders of some of the largest home builders in the United States.

Office Depot on Friday announced that Kevin Peters had resigned from his role as president of the retailer’s North American division effective immediately.

Office Depot said Peters was leaving the company after five years to become CEO of an unidentified industrial distribution company.

Oak Brook, Ill.-based Ace Hardware launched Instant Savings, a program for Ace Rewards members that allows them to receive instant discounts at the register.

“We have made it even easier for our customers to shop with Ace by delivering more value and convenience for them,” said John Surane, senior VP, merchandising, marketing, advertising and paint. “We constantly look for ways to add value for our customers, and Instant Savings is a major new exclusive benefit to our Ace Rewards loyalty program that does just that.”

Chicago -- General Growth Properties said Thursday it was informed by Brookfield Asset Management that affiliates of Brookfield acquired the GGP warrants held by affiliates of Pershing Square Capital Management.

The warrants represent the right to acquire 18.43 million shares of GGP stock at a value of $0.01 per share.

General Growth also said it has been offered by Brookfield the right to acquire the warrants, for the same price of $271.88 million paid by Brookfield, within the next 30 days.

Beachwood, Ohio -- DDR Corp. announced that senior executive VP and CFO David J. Oakes has been named president of the company, effective Jan. 1.
 
Oakes will remain CFO, and will continue to report to CEO Daniel B. Hurwitz.
 
Oakes joined DDR as executive VP of finance and chief investment officer in April 2007. He was promoted to senior EVP finance and chief investment officer in December 2008, and CFO in February 2010.