(New York) Frederick Smith, founding boss of the company specializing in the rapid transport of letters and packages FedEx for about 50 years, will hand over and leave the position of general manager to his current director of operations, Raj Subramaniam, 1er June.
Posted at 6:05 p.m.
Mr. Smith, 77, will however keep an eye on the activity of his company since he will remain executive chairman of the board of directors, details a press release published on Monday.
“Fred is a visionary leader and business legend,” his successor commented in the document.
“He founded one of the most important and admired companies in the world, and it is an honor and a privilege for me to return to his role and build on what he created,” he said. he adds.
He takes over the management of the company when it, like UPS, faces growing competition from Amazon.
The company’s site tells the story of Frederick Smith who first came up with a system to deliver urgent packages, like medicine, on time in an assignment for one of his professors at university. from Yale in 1965. He had then obtained “an average mark”.
The company’s founding date differs depending on the site’s pages, with some highlighting Mr. Smith’s 1971 takeover of Little Rock, Arkansas-based Arkansas Aviation Sales, others the start official of FedEx operations from Memphis, Tennessee on April 17, 1973.
With 389 team members, FedEx delivered 186 packages that night to 25 US cities.
The group now employs around 570,000 people worldwide, who distribute around 17 million packages a day.
Mr. Subramaniam joined the company in 1991, where he held several management positions in Asia, Canada and the United States.