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Yum! Brands combines international, U.S. divisions to focus on growth

November 21, 2013

Yum! Brands announced it is reorganizing its business to drive brand and geographic focus. Effective Jan. 1, the company will combine its Yum! Restaurants International and the U.S. individual divisions for KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.

Yum! Restaurants China and Yum! Restaurants India will remain separate divisions.

According to a news release, the KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell divisions will define and drive the strategic positioning and operating models for the brands, working closely with the China and India division teams.

"We believe that having 100-percent focused brand teams will enable us to more aggressively accelerate growth. We also believe know-how sharing will be more powerful by bringing the U.S. and international businesses together," said David C. Novak, chairman and CEO. "This is a natural evolution from where we are today. Over the last few years, we have been separating our YRI field business units by brand. The next logical step was to organize our division leadership and resources by brand, as we are now doing."

The new leadership structure, reporting to Novak includes:

• Sam Su, Yum! Brands vice chairman and chairman and CEO of Yum! Restaurants China;
• Micky Pant, CEO of KFC;
• Scott Bergren, CEO of Pizza Hut;
• Greg Creed, CEO of Taco Bell; and
• Niren Chaudhary, president of Yum! Restaurants India.

Also reporting to Novak are the Yum! corporate functional leaders of finance, operations, human resources, public affairs and legal.

Rick Carucci played a major role in developing the new organizational strategy and resulting structure. He announced his plans to retire as Yum! Brands president in March 2014 following a transition to the new structure.

"Rick Carucci has been an incredible partner to me, and the company will be forever grateful for his many contributions over a long career with Yum," Novak said. "As we move forward, I couldn't be more confident that the best is yet to come — for our customers, our associates and our franchisees — as we leverage our brand portfolio to grow our business around the world."

Commensurate with this new organizational structure and beginning in fiscal year 2014, Yum! Brands will be providing financial reporting by global division: KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, as well as for Yum! Restaurants China and Yum! Restaurants India.

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