Rite Aid Names Frank Ho Vice President of Indirect Procurement

In mid-July, Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD), the Pennsylvania-based pharmacy retail chain, announced that it has promoted Frank Ho to Vice President of Indirect Procurement, effective immediately. In his new role, Ho will oversee procurement strategy and operations covering systems, supplier, and contract management, and will report to the Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer. Previously, Ho had served as Senior Director of Indirect Procurement at the pharmacy chain, working his way up from Senior Manager of Indirect Procurement since joining Rite Aid in October 2008. Prior to joining Rite Aid, Ho was a consultant with Accenture where he led three teams to source over 55 categories for national and international clients, and he served as an Implementation Manager for American Express where he led purchase card enhancement and implementation programs, among other duties. Ho received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from New York University, a Bachelor of Engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology, and a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University.

SirionLabs Appoints Sourcing Veteran as Senior Vice President of Sales

Late last month, Frankfurt-based SirionLabs, a provider of supplier management technology solutions, announced that it has appointed strategic sourcing veteran, Hartmut Jaeger, as its newest Vice President of Sales. He will leverage his 30 years of strategic sourcing and management consulting experience in IT services to lead SirionLabs’ sales and business development efforts within the European Union. Prior to joining SirionLabs, Jaeger worked in Strategic Sourcing Advisory at Plixos, a partner of SirionLabs, as well as HDP Management Consulting. Prior to that, he held leadership positions at multiple firms, including TPI EuroSourcing, Sun Microsystems, HP, Deutsche Bank, and others.

British Government Sets Threshold for Modern Slavery Act Reporting

In late July, the British government formally set a “turnover threshold” of 36 million British Pounds (roughly $55 million U.S. Dollars) at which enterprises of all sizes will be required to annually report on their efforts to rid their supply chains of slavery, according to an article by the Wall Street Journal. The threshold and reporting requirement, announced by Prime Minister David Cameron, will go into effect in October and cover more than 12,000 British companies and companies doing business in the U.K. Critics of the threshold contend that it will exclude many small-to-mid-size enterprises from taking needed action – and that these are precisely the enterprises that need to be pushed to gain greater visibility into their supply chains and mitigate cases of slavery. However, the requirement is already more robust than similar regulations in the U.S. in that it actually requires organizations to report on the changes they have made – not just the presence of slavery in their supply chains.

Joint Study Yields Mixed Results on 2014-2015 Conflict Minerals Reporting

In early August, a joint research study conducted by Tulane University and Assent Compliance, a New York-based compliance software and services firm, provided mixed results for conflict minerals reporting in 2015. For the second year in a row, less than a quarter of covered organizations filed conflict minerals disclosure forms with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in accordance with Section 1502 of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act on conflict minerals disclosure compliance. Here are some highlights from the report:

• Of the 1,267 organizations that filed reports, 90% did not determine if their products were conflict free
• Organizations that filed reportedly spent an estimated 6 million hours conducting due diligence and reporting activities, or 4735 hours per organization, costing nearly $708 million, or roughly $500,000 per organization
• Filers were divided into two categories: those that filed Form SD, only, and those that filed Form SD plus a Conflict Minerals Report (CMR) which means the organization knows or has reason to believe that it sources conflict minerals from potentially covered countries
• Organizations that filed just the Form SD (20% of all filers) had very high SEC compliance – 94%. However, those that filed a Form SD plus a CMR (80% of all filers) showed great variance
• Just 91 of these organizations declared their supply chains DRC Conflict-Free or DRC Conflict-Underdeterminable; 67% of filers did not disclose their conflict minerals’ country-of-origin, while 58% did not disclose their smelters’ country-of-origin; and 43% of filers did not disclose their due diligence efforts in compliance with the Organization for Economic and Co-Operative Development (OECD).

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