MAM
No media stars in ET corporate excellence awards for ’02-03
MUMBAI: Younger business leaders and successful women entrepreneurs who have given something back to society have been given The Economic Times awards for corporate excellence 2002-2003. However, no media industry head-honcho or company has made it to the top eight list.
The awards presentation will be held in October in Mumbai, when over 300 high-profile dignitaries will gather to salute the winners.
An official release says that the awards intend to recognise and salute the spirit of excellence in corporate India. The list of the eight professionals that the high-profile jury picked to claim the title of ‘the best of the brightest’ in India Inc for ’02-03 comprise AV Birla group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla. At 36 he is the youngest ever to be ET’s ‘business leader of the year’.
Deepak Parekh of HDFC is the youngest ever to receive ‘The ET award for lifetime achievement’, following the likes of Dhirubhai Ambani and Verghese Kurien. The ‘company of the year’ was awarded to Ranbaxy, India’s pharmaceutical pioneer which invested in R&D when few did.
The award for the ’emerging company of the year’ will go to the Citibank promoted i-flex Solutions, whose banking software product has been tried and tested around the globe. The ‘entrepreneur of the year’ award will be bagged by VG Siddhartha for creating a national brand and lifestyle chain Cafe Coffee Day from a commodity business.
The winner for ‘the businesswoman of the year’ is Ela Bhatt, for creating the mammoth business network – SEWA.
In the newest category, introduced this year, for ‘global Indian of the year’, the award was bagged by Amar Gopal Bose who is the legendary creator of the world’s greatest sound systems. The Godrej Group emerged as the ‘corporate citizen of the year’, for its long and proven contribution to the social sector.
Brands
Estée Lauder to shed 10,000 jobs as new boss bets on digital shift
The cosmetics giant raises its profit outlook but stays silent on a possible merger with Spain’s Puig, as job cuts deepen and a three-year sales slump weighs on the turnaround
NEW YORK: Stéphane de La Faverie is not done cutting. Estée Lauder announced on Friday that it plans to eliminate as many as 3,000 additional jobs, taking its total redundancy programme to as many as 10,000 roles, up from a previous target of 7,000 announced a year ago. The company, which owns La Mer, The Ordinary, Tom Ford, and Aveda, employs roughly 57,000 people worldwide. The mathematics of what is now being contemplated is stark.
The fresh round of cuts is expected to generate a further $200 million in savings, bringing the total annual savings from the programme to as much as $1.2 billion before taxes. That money, De La Faverie has made clear, will be ploughed back into the turnaround.
A CEO in a hurry
De La Faverie, who took the helm in January 2025, inherited a company that had endured three consecutive years of annual sales declines. His response has been to move fast and cut deep. A significant portion of the latest redundancies reflects his push to reduce headcount at US department stores, long a cornerstone of Estée Lauder’s distribution model but now a channel in structural decline. In their place, he is accelerating the shift toward faster-growing online platforms, including Amazon.com and TikTok Shop, a pivot that is reshaping not just where Estée Lauder sells but how it thinks about its customers.
The numbers are moving in the right direction
Despite the pain, there are signs the medicine is working. Estée Lauder raised its profit outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year, guiding for adjusted earnings per share in the range of $2.35 to $2.45, above analyst estimates and a notable step up from the $2.05 to $2.25 range it had guided for in February. Organic net sales growth is expected to come in at 3 per cent, the company said, at the high end of the range it set out in February.
The share price tells a mixed story. After De La Faverie took charge, the stock surged nearly 60 per cent, buoyed by investor optimism that a longtime company insider could finally arrest the decline. But 2026 has been rougher: the shares have fallen 27 per cent this year, weighed down by disappointing February results and the overhang of unresolved merger talks with Spanish beauty giant Puig Brands SA. The company gave no additional details about those discussions on Friday, leaving the market to guess.
Silence on Puig
The proposed tie-up with Puig remains the most consequential unknown hanging over Estée Lauder. A deal with the Barcelona-based group, which owns brands including Carolina Herrera and Rabanne, would reshape the global luxury beauty landscape. But with nothing new to say and a turnaround still very much in progress, De La Faverie is asking investors to trust the process.
Three years of sales declines, 10,000 job cuts, and a merger that may or may not happen. At Estée Lauder, the overhaul has barely started.
