Best Buy's Bid for Time

Best Buy’s earnings report is due Tuesday and, like a kid who knows his report card looks grim, the struggling electronics retailer is trying gamely to change the subject. Its board named a new chief executive on Monday, hours after announcing that takeover negotiations with founder and ex-chairman Richard Schulze had fizzled. A clear sign that the board won’t be taking the company private after all, the CEO change flustered investors and left analysts skeptical that Tuesday’s earnings call will offer much in the way of a turnaround strategy, especially since the incoming CEO, Hubert Joly, doesn’t yet have a U.S. visa.

In France, Joly was until Sunday the head of Carlson, a hospitality company that owns the Radisson and Country Inn chains. Best Buy’s chairman, Hatim Tyabji, cited his range and imagination in a statement praising the new CEO. Joly hasn’t worked anywhere particularly analogous to Best Buy, but he has some experience managing troubled companies, including Electronic Data Systems, now part of Hewlett-Packard, and the telecom and digital entertainment company Vivendi.