After leading Hershey to three years of strong performances, CEO David West is leaving to take the top job at the smaller Del Monte Foods, a move that sent the candy maker’s shares plummeting Wednesday. Del Monte Foods, the San Francisco-based food processor, said that West will become its CEO on Aug. 15 and will join the company’s board in June. Del Monte was bought by private equity firms for $4 billion, a deal that closed in March. Hershey chief operating officer John Bilbrey was named interim president and CEO Wednesday. In midday trading, Hershey’s share price slipped $1.80, or more than 3 percent, to 55.28.
Online
Google (GOOG) will complete the biggest hiring year in its history by occupying a new campus of up to nine buildings, extending its growing real estate footprint for the first time across Highway 101 in Mountain View as it leases as much as 630,000 additional square feet of space. Along with Google’s recently announced plans to build as much as 595,000 square feet of new space on 19 acres of land near Charleston Road and Shoreline Boulevard, the new Ellis Street campus would expand Google’s total real estate holdings in Mountain View by about one-quarter. Google needs the space. The Internet giant said in January that 2011 would be its biggest hiring year ever,
adding more than 6,000 employees before the end of the year, with about one-third of those hires in the Bay Area.
Oil
San Ramon-based Chevron doesn’t plan to seek partners for its shale-gas fields in Poland and isn’t looking for further reserves in the central European country, Pat Blough, vice president for gas commercialization at Chevron Global Gas, said today in Warsaw. Chevron owns four shale gas exploration licenses in Poland’s Lublin basin covering 1.1 million acres of land, according to a company presentation. It will begin drilling exploratory wells in the fourth quarter of 2011, country manager John Claussen told reporters today.
Compiled from staff and wire reports.
Article source: http://www.insidebayarea.com/business/ci_18087535