Ashland Global Holdings Inc. has announced a consolidation of executive roles as part of its ongoing plan to drive profitable growth as a pure-play specialty chemicals company following the planned final separation of Valvoline Inc. this spring.
Under the consolidation, two executive positions have been eliminated in order to improve execution of strategic priorities, streamline decision making and reflect Ashland’s leaner organization structure. The roles and responsibilities of Luis Fernandez-Moreno, senior vice president and president, Chemicals Group, and Greg Elliott, vice president and chief human resources and communications officer, have been consolidated under other members of Ashland’s executive leadership team.
Fernandez-Moreno joined Ashland in November 2012. He played an important role in driving a turnaround of Ashland’s water technologies business, which was divested in 2014, and later led the chemicals group as Ashland took the final step in its decade-long transformation into a global specialty chemicals company. Elliott joined Ashland in November 2015 and helped drive human resources and change management as Ashland separated into two companies.
As part of the realignment, most of Ashland’s commercial leadership team, as well as the chief technology officer, will now report directly to William Wulfsohn, Ashland chairman and CEO.
“Luis and Greg are skilled leaders and we appreciate their many contributions to Ashland. This was a very difficult decision, as each has brought a great deal to the organization,” said Wulfsohn. “At the same time, we believe this consolidation of roles will forge a stronger, more direct connection to the business and better position our teams to execute against Ashland’s key priorities this year.”
He continued, “As we outlined in our first-quarter earnings call with investors in late January, our entire organization is excited about Ashland’s ‘pivot’ to being a leading premier specialty chemicals company. Our first-quarter results represented a solid start to fiscal 2017 and we intend to build on that momentum as we move through the year and deliver against our fiscal 2017 plan.”
