“His track record shows that." Under Parker’s leadership, the company grew sales from $15 billion to $39 billion a year.
Nike’s stock has increased more than 20 percent since the first of the year.
In his 13 years at Nike’s top job, Parker, 64, led the company to awesome growth -- from $15 billion to nearly $40 billion in sales. Tim Boyle, CEO, chair and President of Columbia Sportswear, said Parker’s pending retirement is a big loss to the company and the community. Employment at Nike during Parker’s stint as CEO grew from 28,000 to 76,700.
The surprise move comes after multiple issues became apparent at Nike, most recently a doping scandal that led to the four-year ban of Alberto Salazar, a prominent Nike employee. Included as evidence in the case were emails to Parker keeping him apprised of the latest dope experiments.
An accomplished college runner himself, Parker adamantly denied he knew anything about the doping and insisted that Nike would never be involved in such a practice.
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There were plenty of other painful problems during Parker’s tenure:
-- Women frustrated that they were paid less and promoted less often than their male counterparts demanded Parker and his virtually all-male executive team make changes.
-- Rival factions engaged in a debilitating battle for control of the company, which led to the sudden “retirement” of the company’s no. 2 executive and the firing of several others.
-- Criminal investigators probed the elite teenage basketball world and found convincing evidence that Nike and other sneaker companies were paying top teenage prospects. Unlike Adidas, which saw an employee and a consultant hit with fraud charges, Nike managed to avoid any indictments. Only in September did court documents reveal that Nike had been cooperating with prosecutors for two years.
-- Some of Nike’s top female athletes blasted the company for policies that effectively cut the pay and otherwise penalized them for getting pregnant.
Though all of the issues, Nike’s sustained sales growth and increased its market dominance.