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A third high-profile technology executive is leaving General Motors amid a reorganization of the automaker’s software and product businesses.
Baris Cetinok, GM senior vice president of software and services product management, will depart the company next month.
GM is combining its vehicle software engineering and global product units under one organization, led by new Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson.

Mary Barra, Chair and CEO of General Motors (right to left), Mark Reuss, President, Sterling Anderson, Chief Product Officer, and Dave Richardson, Senior Vice President Software and Services Engineering at “GM Forward” on Wednesday, October 22, 2025 in New York.

DETROIT – A third high-profile technology executive is leaving General Motors amid a restructuring of the automaker’s software and product businesses, CNBC has learned.
Baris Cetinok, GM senior vice president of software and services product management, will depart the company effective Dec. 12, the automaker confirmed Tuesday after an internal announcement to employees.

Cetinok is the third tech-turned-auto executive to leave GM in roughly a month as the company combines its vehicle software engineering and global product units under one organization, led by new Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson.
“Baris has built a strong software product management team at GM. We’re grateful for his contributions and wish him continued success. With hardware and software engineering unified under Global Product, we’re integrating product management with engineering to accelerate the delivery of exceptional in-vehicle experiences,” GM said in an emailed statement to CNBC.
Cetinok, who joined GM in September 2023 after stints with companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, could not immediately be reached for comment. The announcement of his departure comes a month after he described his position as “a product person’s dream” in an interview with CNBC.
GM’s senior vice president of software and services engineering, Dave Richardson, and its head of GM artificial intelligence, Barak Turovsky, have also left the company since October. Richardson was with GM for more than two years, while Turovsky was hired in March.

GM Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson during the automaker’s “GM Forward” event on Oct. 22, 2025 in New York City.
Michael Wayland / CNBC

Anderson left the self-driving company he cofounded, Aurora Innovation, to join GM. He told CNBC last month that in order for the automaker to succeed, software and product must be thought of as one and the same.

“That’s the point of the role, I think, is it brings together all of these pieces into a unified approach to how we do product going forward,” Anderson said during an Oct. 22 interview at a GM technology event in New York.
Anderson, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant who later led Tesla’s AutoPilot program, said his goal is to accelerate the pace of GM’s innovations.
When Anderson’s appointment with GM was announced in May, Cetinok said in a LinkedIn post he was “delighted to welcome” the executive to the company. GM CEO Mary Barra and GM President Mark Reuss also hailed Anderson as being equipped to “evolve” and “reinvent” the automaker’s operations.
The global automotive industry has battled for years to better integrate technology into vehicles – from their production to consumer-facing software and remote, or “over-the-air,” updates like Tesla pioneered.
GM has taken an aggressive approach to combat such challenges by hiring leaders from Tesla and technology companies such as Apple and Google. However, many times, such executives have had short tenures with the company. More

Roughly 15% of the homes that were delisted in September were at risk of selling at a loss, according to Redfin.
Redfin found 70% of homes listed in September were on the market for 60 days or longer.
The supply of homes for sale is about 15% higher now than it was a year ago.

Weak buyer demand, weakening home prices and overall uncertainty in the economy are combining to make home sellers change their minds and step out of the market.
Close to 85,000 U.S. sellers took their homes off the market in September, up 28% from September 2024 and the highest level for that month in eight years, according to Redfin. 

Sellers are delisting because so many listings are going stale, sitting on the market longer and longer. Redfin reported that 70% of listings in September were on the market for 60 days or longer.
Homeowners are seeing prices weaken significantly and would rather wait than accept a low offer. Prices in September were 1.3% higher year over year, down from a 1.4% rise in August, according to the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index.

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“The frequency of delistings is keeping inventory tighter than it looks on paper,” said Asad Khan, a senior economist at Redfin. “When tens of thousands of homeowners pull their homes off the market rather than accept a low offer, it effectively reduces the supply of homes that are actually available for buyers. That keeps sale prices elevated.”
Some sellers are lowering prices — even multiple times. The typical price cut is roughly $10,000, but multiple reductions are becoming more common as homes take longer to sell, according to Zillow. The typical listing saw $25,000 in cumulative price cuts in October, matching the largest discounts Zillow has ever recorded.
The housing market is now heading into its slowest season. While 1 in 5 homes that are delisted are relisted, that may not happen for several months, as sellers will likely wait for the much busier spring season to try again.

Home prices are still 50% higher than they were just five years ago, but some sellers who bought in the last few years are facing potential losses. Roughly 15% of the homes that were delisted in September were at risk of selling at a loss, the highest share in five years, according to Redfin.
The supply of homes for sale is about 15% higher now than it was a year ago, according to Realtor.com, but that is likely to shrink in the coming weeks, both because of the season and because of weakening consumer sentiment among buyers and sellers alike.
Pending sales in October, which are based on signed contracts, were up 1.9% month to month and basically flat from a year ago, according to the Realtors. The monthly bump may have been due to a small drop in mortgage rates, which then turned higher again in November. More

Bidder dynamics in October saw the second-highest monthly gain over the past year, according to JLL’s Global Bid Intensity Index.
Multifamily housing led real estate subsectors in competition with the strongest bidding activity.
There was also a significant rebound in bidding competitiveness for the industrial and logistics sector, as trade policy uncertainty settled slightly. 

Modern urban condos in Chattanooga, Tennessee
Marcia Straub | Moment | Getty Images

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July marked a turning point in competition for commercial real estate properties, with bids rising for the first time in more than a year. That trend continued into October. 

Bidder dynamics during the month saw the second-highest monthly gain over the past year, according to JLL’s Global Bid Intensity Index. Competitiveness continues to improve, partly due to interest rate cuts by the U.S. Federal Reserve in September and October.
The index measures bidding activity in order to give a real-time view of liquidity and competitiveness in private real estate capital markets. That, in turn, is an indicator for future capital flows across investment sales transactions.
“As capital deployment accelerated during the third quarter, institutional investors are signaling increased confidence in the market, even as uncertainty persists,” said Richard Bloxam, CEO of capital markets at JLL. “We expect business confidence will continue to improve and pave the way for continued capital flow growth into 2026.”

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Of all the commercial real estate sectors, multifamily housing led in competition with the strongest bidding activity. That is being driven by housing shortages across most major markets. Rental vacancy rates are still high, but more renters are expected to re-lease in the coming year because the for-sale housing market is so expensive.
JLL estimates that there is a shortage of 3.5 million housing units in the U.S. That, along with near-record-high home prices, is keeping renters in place for longer and will likely push multifamily vacancy rates lower once all the new supply makes it through the pipeline. All of that is driving continued strong conviction among multifamily investors. 

There was also a significant rebound in bidding competitiveness for the industrial and logistics sector, as trade policy uncertainty settled slightly. 
There was some softening in competition for retail properties simply because there were more of them for sale, so buyers had more choice. There were, however, more deals in the market. Investor demand is being driven by a rise in consumer and retail spending, for now at least. 
The office sector is also well into recovery, with bid dynamics rising from all-time lows in late 2023. Investor sentiment is improving with expanding bidder pools and increased lender participation.
Near-term interest rate cuts are still in question, especially given stronger-than-expected employment figures for September, released late due to the government shutdown. Investors, however, seem to be less sensitive to the timing, as they still expect rates to come down further next year. 
“While market uncertainty will continue to impact decision-making, the growth picture is looking more positive for 2026. Having worked through various junctures of uncertainty over the past year, more investors are showing a higher tolerance for risk,” Bloxam said. “Coupled with the exceptionally strong debt markets, we expect this will catalyze continued improvement in liquidity.” More

Best Buy hiked its full-year sales and earnings outlook.
The consumer electronics retailer said it saw tech upgrades and strong sales of computers, gaming consoles and smartphones during the fiscal third quarter.
The company’s annual sales have declined for the past three years.

A Best Buy store in Pinole, California, US, on Monday, Nov. 24, 2025. Best Buy Co. is expected to release earnings figures on November 25.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Best Buy hiked its full-year forecast Tuesday, as it topped Wall Street’s quarterly sales expectations and customers turned to the retailer to upgrade tech devices and splurge on new computers, gaming consoles and smartphones.
The consumer electronics retailer said it now expects revenue of between $41.65 billion to $41.95 billion for the full year, higher than its previous range of $41.1 billion to $41.9 billion. It expects adjusted earnings per share of $6.25 to $6.35, compared with its prior range of $6.15 to $6.30.

Best Buy said it expects full-year comparable sales, a metric that tracks sales online and at stores open at least 14 months, to range between a 0.5% rise to a 1.2% increase, compared with its previous expectations for a 1% decline and a 1% climb.
In the company’s news release, CEO Corie Barry said Best Buy saw “better-than-expected sales” for the quarter because of strong results across computing, gaming and mobile phones. She said sales grew across both its website and stores.
“We are flexing the unique strength of our model as customers need to upgrade or replace their consumer electronics and new products and innovation are coming to market,” Barry said.
She said the quarterly results are “setting us up well for an exciting holiday season.”
Here’s how the retailer did for the three-month period that ended Nov. 1 compared with what Wall Street was expecting, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: $1.40 adjusted vs. $1.31 expected
Revenue: $9.67 billion vs. $9.59 billion expected

Best Buy has been waiting for some of the key catalysts that tend to drive its business, such as higher housing turnover that leads to appliance purchases, the tech innovations that spark demand for devices and expert advice, and the increased willingness by inflation-weary consumers to splurge on discretionary items.
Some of that tech innovation appears to be gaining momentum with sales of the Nintendo Switch 2, new iPhones and AI-enabled laptops. The company called out those merchandise categories as strengths in the most recent three-month period.
Best Buy’s net income for the fiscal third quarter fell to $140 million, or 66 cents per share, from net income of $273 million, or $1.26 per share, in the year-ago period.
Revenue rose from $9.45 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Best Buy’s comparable sales increased 2.7% year over year. In the U.S., the metric jumped 2.4%, as shoppers bought computers, gaming systems and mobile phones, but purchased fewer appliances and home theaters.
Best Buy’s annual revenue has dropped for the past three years. With the updated guidance, the company expects annual revenue to be slightly higher than last year’s total of $41.53 billion.
As of Monday’s close, shares of Best Buy have dropped by about 12% so far this year. That compares with the 14% gains of the S&P 500 during the same period.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates. More

Abercrombie & Fitch beat Wall Street’s expectations on the top and bottom lines.
Sales are slowing down at its namesake banner, but picking up at Hollister, which is expected to carry the company’s holiday shopping season.
Abercrombie’s holiday guidance is in line with expectations.

An Abercrombie & Fitch store stands in midtown Manhattan in New York City on Oct. 24, 2024.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Shares of Abercrombie & Fitch soared 16% in premarket trading on Tuesday after the company posted 7% growth in quarterly sales and issued its holiday guidance. 
Abercrombie, which runs its namesake brand and Hollister, is expecting fourth-quarter sales to climb between 4% and 6%, which is largely below Wall Street expectations of 5.6% growth, according to LSEG. It anticipates earnings per share will be between $3.40 and $3.70, roughly in line with expectations of $3.55 per share. 

Abercrombie beat Wall Street’s expectations on the top and bottom lines in the fiscal third quarter. Here’s how the apparel retailer did in the period ended Nov. 1 compared with what Wall Street was anticipating, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: $2.36 vs. $2.16 expected
Revenue: $1.29 billion vs. $1.28 billion expected

The company’s reported net income for the quarter was $113 million, or $2.36 per share, compared with $131.98 million, or $2.50 per share, a year earlier.  
Sales rose to $1.29 billion, up about 7% from $1.21 billion a year earlier. 
During the quarter, sales at Abercrombie brand fell 2% to $617.35 million, well below the $631.8 million analysts were expecting, according to StreetAccount. Comparable sales fell by a staggering 7%.
For at least the third quarter in a row, Hollister saved the retailer, as sales climbed 16% to $673.27 million, well above the $649.7 million analysts had expected, according to StreetAccount. Comparable sales rose 15%.

The company’s namesake banner has fueled its comeback in recent years, but now that the Abercrombie brand’s growth has started to moderate, Hollister has picked up the baton. CEO Fran Horowitz said sales at Abercrombie are expected to be flat in the current quarter, indicating growth at Hollister is set to drive the company’s holiday shopping season. 
Last quarter, Horowitz said the slowdown at Abercrombie was related to old inventory the company needed to mark down to sell. She said she expected the brand to be back to growth by the end of the year, but that no longer seems to be the case.
During the company’s conference call, investors will be looking out for details about the company’s plan to reignite growth at its namesake brand.  More

Federal rules on the abortion pill mifepristone remain unchanged a year after President Donald Trump’s election, but an FDA safety review has stirred new uncertainty.
State enforcement and lawsuits are reshaping access and liability across a $6.9 billion abortion drugs market in the U.S., which is reliant on telehealth and mail delivery.
Drugmakers including Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro have expanded into miscarriage and hormonal therapy markets.

Mifepristone and Misoprostol pills are pictured Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018, in Skokie, Illinois.
Erin Hooley | Chicago Tribune | Tribune News Service | Getty Images

Just over a year since Donald Trump was elected president again, the $6.9 billion abortion pill industry is operating under the same federal rules he inherited from former President Joe Biden — but new threats to the drug are mounting.
Between a Food and Drug Administration safety review that could upend distribution, legal battles over whether the pill can stay on the market, and anti-abortion rhetoric from activists and the Trump administration, drugmakers appear to be bracing for a storm that could reshape a profitable corner of the health-care industry.

“When it comes to medication abortion, there haven’t been any major policy changes yet in this administration,” said Katie O’Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy for the National Women’s Law Center. “But, we’ve also seen some signaling from the administration that they’re going to do something.”
For now, the FDA permits the pill, mifepristone, to be prescribed via telehealth and delivered by mail. Certified pharmacies are still dispensing it in about half of U.S. states, depending on state law.
Taken with misoprostol, mifepristone forms the standard two-drug regimen that has been used in the U.S. for more than two decades and accounts for about two-thirds of abortions annually, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Though Trump and many key anti-abortion advisors have been in power for more than a year, manufacturing of mifepristone hasn’t dropped. And in September, the FDA quietly approved a generic version from Evita Solutions, the first new U.S. producer since 2019, to end pregnancies through 10 weeks.
Yet, analysts like Joe Thome at TD Cowen, who covers the FDA, say there’s more risk to the market and abortion access than it may seem.

Even small shifts in federal rules could ripple across the supply chain from insurance reimbursement systems to telemedicine platforms and pharmacy compliance protocols, particularly for mifepristone makers such as GenBioPro, Evita Solutions and Danco Laboratories.
“If the FDA were to add warning labels or more restrictive limits on treatment, that then can trickle down into policies for payers, Medicaid reimbursement, companies’ production and performance and have implications for actually getting the drug to to patients for at an affordable rate,” Thome said.

How the FDA could shape access

The FDA’s approval of Evita’s generic pill marked a rare expansion of the mifepristone market. The agency put out no press release or statement about the approval, a silence Thome and many abortion rights advocates interpreted as an effort to avoid reigniting one of the country’s most polarizing debates.
Pharmaceutical stocks barely moved on the approval partly because insiders had anticipated it as a regulatory formality, O’Connor said. Under federal law, once a generic drug meets equivalence standards —meaning it performs the same way in the body as the brand-name version — the FDA has little discretion to block it, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
“It took the anti-abortion movement a little bit by surprise, but it shouldn’t have. This is the way the FDA is meant to operate,” O’Connor said.
Behind the scenes, Trump has appointed FDA officials sympathetic to anti‑abortion groups since returning to office. In May, the agency launched a controversial safety review of mifepristone at the behest of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that could lead to tighter telehealth and mail-order restrictions, require in-person doctor prescriptions for the pill or even pull the drug from shelves.
The FDA hasn’t detailed the scope or timeline of the review. Some experts have criticized the studies cited to justify the review as methodologically flawed; Laurie Sobel, an associate director for women’s health policy at KFF, told CNBC they are “junk science.”
Trump has other levers beyond the FDA if he wants to curb access, experts said.
Chief among them is reviving the 19th century Comstock Act — a dormant law prohibiting the mailing of “obscene” materials, including abortion drugs. The Biden administration interpreted it narrowly to allow pill shipments to states where abortion is legal. But the Trump Justice Department could reinterpret the statute more broadly to block the shipments of mifepristone nationwide.
Mifepristone has a 25-year safety record for ending pregnancies in the U.S. Since 2021, the FDA has permitted telehealth and mail-order prescriptions, making abortions cheaper and more accessible, particularly for women far from clinics or in states that restricted the procedure after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court decision that overturned abortion rights enshrined in Roe v. Wade.
Meanwhile, pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens haven’t stopped prescribing mifepristone in legal states, though both maintain strict controls to limit liability.
“The more that these drugs are stigmatized, the more that the pharmacies themselves risk becoming stigmatized simply by providing the drugs,” said R. Alta Charo, a professor emerita of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said. “At some point these pharmacies may say we don’t want to get involved in that, and they may just decide not to stock the drug.”
However, Costco announced in August that it would not sell mifepristone in its stores’ pharmacies citing low demand from members and other patient customers.

Dr. Franz Theard watches a patient take mifepristone, the first medication in a medical abortion, at Women’s Reproductive Clinic of New Mexico, in Santa Teresa, January 13, 2023.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

How drugmakers are responding

Inside the industry, drugmakers like Danco Laboratories, GenBioPro and Evita Solutions appear to be taking steps that would likely cushion the blow of any crackdown on mifepristone.
Danco Laboratories is seeking FDA approval to expand mifepristone’s approved use to include miscarriage management, The Wall Street Journal first reported. Evita and GenBioPro are also exploring new hormonal therapy products.
“Companies don’t always pursue a formal regulatory approval for a secondary or tertiary use, because to do that, you have to go through another set of clinical trials that’s incredibly expensive,” Charo said. “But, if they do it, then they get an advantage.
GenBioPro also remains embroiled in a lawsuit against the FDA and the state of West Virginia from 2023, arguing that the state’s ban on mifepristone conflicts with the federal approval authority, a concept known as “federal preemption.” The case remains under appeal but more litigation would likely follow suit should future federal directives curb telehealth access to mifepristone.
“There’s been a lot of litigation around mifepristone in the last few years, and there’s a lot of uneasiness by pharmaceutical companies of a court telling the FDA how to act,” Caroline Sacerdote, a litigator at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told CNBC. “That’s not the protocol.”

Misoprostol, one of the two drugs used in a medication abortion, is displayed at the Women’s Reproductive Clinic, which provides legal medication abortion services, in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, on June 17, 2022.
Robyn Beck | AFP | Getty Images

State-level differences in abortion pill access

As drugmakers take stock of potential federal changes, they have to navigate a wide range of state policies.
The number of abortions in states with total bans or early gestational limits saw sharp drops immediately after the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs ruling, but have seen a slight decline since Trump took office, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Nationwide, the number of abortions rose in 2023 and 2024 even with bans on the surgical procedure in a dozen states.
No state has enacted a new medication abortion ban since Trump’s election. In fact, voters in seven states approved ballot measures to protect abortion rights, often by enshrining them in their state constitutions. However, in a few states, enforcement of preexisting abortion bans has hardened.
Texas, Louisiana and Idaho have expanded penalties for mailing abortion pills, while Texas’s “bounty-hunter law” allows private citizens to sue anyone who helps facilitate an illegal abortion — even by advising or mailing pills.
Those measures are subject to a number of ongoing lawsuits. Still, bans on mail-order pills have proven difficult to carry out, Charo said. The U.S. Postal Service doesn’t proactively help states enforce bans or screen mail for pills, and federal law dictates what the USPS can or will do, making it nearly impossible for state authorities to intercept packages without federal assistance.
Even so, simply the possibility of legal action has had a chilling effect on providers who are afraid to prescribe mifepristone, via telehealth or through the mail, to patients across state lines where the medicine is legal but surgical abortion is not.
“Louisiana has indicted a doctor in New York for providing telehealth medication abortion to someone in Louisiana. Texas has sued a doctor in New York for for doing the same thing,” O’Connor said. “That in and of itself, it has a really serious chilling effect on doctors feeling as comfortable prescribing.”
Meanwhile, states like California and New York have strengthened “shield laws” that protect providers treating out-of-state patients. Even so, funding cuts, staff shortages and surging out-of-state demand have forced some clinics to shutter.
“Regardless of whether abortion is legal, clinics are struggling to stay open,” Sobel with KFF said. “The Big Beautiful Bill has cut funding for Planned Parenthood and funding for other family planning … It’s also the restrictions on federal funding that are impacting the ability for clinics that regularly see Medicaid patients too.” More

Dick’s Sporting Goods will close a number of Foot Locker stores as it begins to restructure the newly acquired business.
Excluding Foot Locker, Dick’s saw comparable sales rise 5.7% during its fiscal third quarter, well ahead of the 3.6% growth analysts had expected.
The company issued bullish guidance ahead of the holiday shopping season.

A Dick’s Sporting Goods store in Pleasant Hill, California, US, on Monday, Nov. 24, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Dick’s Sporting Goods is planning to close a slew of Foot Locker stores now that its acquisition of the sneaker company is complete, the company said Tuesday when announcing fiscal third-quarter earnings.  
It’s unclear how many stores Dick’s plans to shutter, but the closures are part of a larger restructuring it’s implementing so Foot Locker isn’t a drag on its profits come fiscal 2026, Dick’s executive chairman Ed Stack told CNBC’s Courtney Reagan. 

“We need to clean out the garage,” said Stack. “We’ve taken pretty aggressive markdowns to clean out old merchandise. We’re impairing some store assets. We’ll close some stores… everything we’re doing is there to protect 2026 and just kind of do this one time.” 
The company declined to say how many stores would be impacted and whether the restructuring will include layoffs.
As a result, Foot Locker’s comparable sales are expected to be down in the mid- to high-single digits in the current quarter with margins expected to fall between 10 and 15 percentage points.
Beyond the Foot Locker business, Dick’s stores saw comparable sales rise 5.7% during the quarter, well ahead of the 3.6% analysts had expected, according to StreetAccount.
For its namesake banner, the company is now expecting comparable sales to rise between 3.5% and 4%, up from its prior range of 2% to 3.5%. That’s ahead of expectations for 3.6% growth, according to StreetAccount. 

Dick’s is also now expecting full-year earnings per share to be between $14.25 and $14.55, up from a previous forecast of $13.90 to $14.50 and in line with expectations of $14.44 per share, according to LSEG. 
Here’s how the big-box sporting goods store performed compared with what Wall Street was anticipating, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: $2.78 adjusted vs. $2.71 expected
Revenue: $4.17 billion vs. $3.59 billion expected

The company’s reported net income for the three-month period that ended Nov. 1 was $75.2 million, or 86 cents per share, compared with $227.8 million, or $2.75 per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items including the impact of the Foot Locker acquisition, Dick’s posted earnings per share of $2.78.
Dick’s has been a standout performer across the retail industry and now has the challenge of fixing Foot Locker’s business so it doesn’t weigh on its typically pristine results. 
Dick’s $2.4 billion acquisition of Foot Locker gave it a massive competitive edge in the wholesale sneaker market, most importantly for Nike products, and access to both an international and urban consumer.
It’s also super-charging the company’s growth. Thanks to Foot Locker’s revenue, almost $931 million during the quarter, Dick’s sales rose a staggering 36% to $4.17 billion from $3.06 billion a year earlier.
However, it also acquired some risks. Foot Locker has about 2,400 stores globally and has underperformed for years. Its consumer tends to skew lower-income than Dick’s’ and hasn’t held up as well in a softening economy. 
Under CEO Mary Dillon, Foot Locker had worked to refresh its stores and change the way it merchandises sneakers. Since its acquisition, it began testing changes in 11 stores in North America to see if the fixes improve sales, including cutting products by over 20%, bringing back apparel and changing Foot Locker’s “footwear wall.” 
“If you’d walked into a Foot Locker store before and you looked at the footwear wall … it was nothing but a run on sentence,” said Stack. “It was just a whole bunch of shoes thrown up on the wall, and we took all of that down, we re-merchandised it, focused on shoes we really wanted to sell. … It’s early on, but we’re pretty enthusiastic about what we’ve done.” 
— CNBC’s Courtney Reagan contributed to this report. More

Kohl’s named Michael Bender its permanent CEO.
Bender is the third CEO the department store has had in three years, and the move comes after the company fire ex-CEO Ashley Buchanan only a few months into his tenure.
The chain’s sales have been declining.

Kohl’s said Monday that Michael Bender, who has served as its interim CEO, will become its permanent chief executive as the department store tries to get back to sales growth.
He becomes the third CEO for the department store in about three years. The move is effective as of Sunday.

Bender, who has been director of Kohl’s board since July 2019, became the company’s interim CEO in May. The retailer appointed Bender to the position after firing CEO Ashley Buchanan after just a few months into his tenure.
Kohl’s fired Buchanan after it said a company investigation found that he had pushed for deals with a vendor with whom he had a personal relationship. That person was Chandra Holt, a former retail executive who had a romantic relationship with Buchanan.
Kohl’s leadership announcement comes a day before the retailer reports fiscal third-quarter earnings. Along with leadership turmoil, Kohl’s has struggled with declining sales. The company said in August that it expects net sales to drop by 5% to 6% for the fiscal year.
Kohl’s has had many changes at the top since former CEO Michelle Gass left the company in 2022 to join Levi Strauss & Co., where she later succeeded then-CEO Chip Bergh. She was followed at Kohl’s by Tom Kingsbury, a then-board member of the company, who became interim and then permanent CEO.

Michael Bender named Kohl’s Interim CEO.
Courtesy: Kohl’s

Bender, 64, previously held leadership and management roles at retailers including Victoria’s Secret, Walmart and Eyemart Express. Along with his role as CEO, Bender will continue to serve on the company’s board.

In a news release, board chair John Schlifske said Kohl’s hired an external firm and “conducted a comprehensive search” for the retailer’s new leader. He said Bender is the right person for the job because of his “three decades of leadership experience across retail and consumer goods companies and a deep commitment to the Kohl’s brand.”
“Over the past several months as interim CEO, Michael has proven to be an exceptional leader for Kohl’s – progressively improving results, driving short and long-term strategy, and positively impacting cultural change,” he said.
In a CNBC interview, Bender described Kohl’s turnaround as “heading toward close to the middle innings.”
“For me, that’s a good thing, because it means there’s still good work to be done, and ideas and challenges to bring forward to solve,” he said.
At Kohl’s, he said customers have “a lot of excitement,” but also “a more discerning, choiceful attitude about the dollars they spend.”
“What they’re looking for from retailers is curating assortment for me of quality products at a value that compels me to either get off the couch, or if I want to stay on the couch, to get on my phone and and order from you because they signify value for me,” he said.
Over the past five years, Kohl’s shares have fallen by about 53%. So far this year, its stock is up nearly 12%.
— CNBC’s Courtney Reagan contributed to this report More