Corporate Governance

New York — Wal-Mart Stores named  Greg Penner, 44, to the new role of vice chairman, a move that positions him to be a successor to chairman Rob Walton. Penner, 44, is Walton’s son-in-law and has served on the board since 2008. The appointment was announced Friday morning at the company's shareholders' meeting.

The move strengthens the Walton family’s control of the board. Walton, 69, is the son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton.  

Houston — Mattress Firm Holding Corp. has completed its acquisition of the mattress specialty retail assets and operations of Mattress Liquidators, Inc., which operates Mattress King retail stores in Colorado and BedMart retail stores in Arizona.

Indianapolis — Lids Sports Group is acquiring Cardboard Heroes, a licensed sports apparel, headwear and novelty retailer headquartered in Dayton, Ohio. The acquisition consists of 19 Cardboard Heroes stores in Ohio and Kentucky, which include four Buckeye Room locations that specialize in Ohio State University sports merchandise, as well as the e-commerce websites cheroes.com and buckeyeroom.com.

New York — Coach Inc. will reportedly start offering 25% discounts on its luxury handbags at its stores in twice-a-year sales during June and December. According to Bloomberg, Coach will reduce prices on end-of-season and discount merchandise from 30-50%.

Toronto, Canada — Loblaw Companies Ltd. and LoyaltyOne's Precima merchandising/marketing solutions provider are renewing and expanding their long-term engagement. Precima has been working with Loblaw for a number of years with a focus on developing and executing customer-centric merchandising and marketing strategies.

Fremont, Calif. — The Men's Wearhouse has extended its all-cash tender offer for $65 per share for all of the currently outstanding shares of common stock (including associated stock purchase rights) of Jos. A. Bank to June 19, 2014, unless further amended.  The tender offer was previously set to expire on June 5, 2014.

St. Louis — The Panera Bread Company board of directors has approved a new three-year share repurchase program of up to $600 million. This new program will replace an existing program which was scheduled to expire on Aug. 23, 2015 and has been terminated by the board of directors in connection with approving the new program.

The repurchases will be effected from time to time. The share repurchase program and the board's authorization of the program may be modified, suspended, or discontinued at any time.

Walldorf, Germany — SAP AG plans to acquire SeeWhy, a Boston-based provider of cloud-based behavioral target marketing solutions. SAP intends the addition of SeeWhy to complement its Hybris commerce platform with one-to-one personalized marketing based on real-time customer behavior that converts customer interactions into sales.

Walmart served up dozens of its top executives to the media this week for two days of store tours and briefings in advance of the company’s shareholders meeting, which began Friday, June 6 at 7 a.m. What follows are 10 key takeaways and select nuggets from the meetings before the meeting.
 

The Men's Wearhouse expects to complete its merger with Jos. A. Bank in the next few weeks, and looks forward to reaping the benefits of that combination as it closes its fiscal first quarter ended May 3.

Total net sales for quarter increased 2.3% to $630.5 million from $616.5 million in the prior-year quarter. Retail segment sales for the quarter increased by 2.4% and corporate apparel sales increased by 0.8% as compared to the prior year quarter.