With brief, occasional, italicized and sometimes gratuitous commentary…
• Some 33,000 Albertsons employees have been informed via a letter from management that their personal information may have been exposed in a data breach.
The letter informed employees that hackers infiltrated the company's computer systems last December and stole employee data, including names, birthdates and Social Security numbers.
The retailer said that the situation has been contained and that it is providing affected employees with support services.
• The Wall Street Journal reports that Gap "is eliminating hundreds of corporate jobs from its global workforce as part of a broad restructuring aimed at making the company more nimble and less bureaucratic, according to people familiar with the situation.
"The current round of cuts is slated to be larger than in September, when Gap eliminated roughly 500 corporate positions, one of the people said. Those job cuts were mostly at its main offices in San Francisco and New York, and were part of efforts to save about $250 million annually.
"More recently, the leaders of each of the company’s brands—Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic and Athleta—have been conducting a wide-ranging review with the goal of stripping out layers of management to speed decision making, the people said … In March, Gap said it identified an additional $300 million in cost cuts, including by stripping out layers of management. At the time, company leaders didn’t say how many jobs would be lost. But it announced the elimination of one high-profile position, that of chief growth officer."
I guess that when you're reducing the headcount to this degree, a Chief Growth Officer doesn't have a whole hell of a lot to do.
