A week after firing Market Basket’s prominent chief executive, the supermarket chain’s board of directors has named an interim CEO.
On Tuesday, the three-member board of directors announced that longtime chief financial officer Donald Mulligan would now be the interim chief executive officer of the Tewksbury-based company, formally known as Demoulas Super Markets, after the board fired CEO Arthur T. Demoulas.
Mulligan’s appointment is a sign that the board wants to provide some stability after it decided to fire Demoulas, an executive beloved by many of the chain’s 30,000-plus employees. It’s the latest milestone in an ongoing leadership saga that has engulfed the 90-store chain that’s cherished by New England shoppers for its low prices and personalized service.
“Don Mulligan is the voice of consistency at Market Basket, one that our associates and customers can count on to proudly continue the same thriving culture and the ‘More For Your Dollar’ shopping experience,” board chair Jay Hachigian said in a statement. “The Board has worked closely with Mr. Mulligan and has come to appreciate his exceptional business acumen, the respect and admiration our associates have for him, and his deep understanding of the history and culture that make Market Basket so special.”
Mulligan has appeared alongside Demoulas at numerous board meetings over the years, to report on the company’s financial health. He’s been with the chain for more than 40 years, after getting hired under Demoulas’s father, Telemachus “Mike” Demoulas, from an accounting firm where he worked on the Market Basket account. Mulligan worked his way up in the company, to be promoted to CFO in 1999. Mulligan grew up in Lowell — the same city where Demoulas’s grandparents started the company, with one food store, more than a century ago.
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And Mulligan was among the executives who walked out in 2014 in support of Demoulas, when a different board fired him the first time. At that point, the company was controlled by a cousin of Demoulas, and widely publicized boycotts by workers, distributors and shoppers followed Demoulas’s firing. He won the CEO’s job back and reinstalled his lieutenants after working with his three sisters to borrow $1.6 billion and buy out his cousin’s faction.
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However, the relationships between Demoulas and his three sisters deteriorated over the years, and the sisters brought on new board members. Together, the three sisters control 61 percent of the company today, while Arthur has a 28 percent stake, and so can be outvoted.
These tensions came to a head at a board meeting in the summer of 2024, when the board discussed demanding certain things of Demoulas, such as more financial information, advance notice of big capital expenditures, and a succession plan that did not involve his two kids who worked at the company.
The board and Demoulas continued to clash. Eventually, in May, the board put Demoulas on paid leave along with several lieutenants (but not Mulligan), as well as his two children who had been working at the company, to investigate whether he was planning a work stoppage to protect his job, like what happened in 2014.
But no significant protests or boycotts have followed the removal of Demoulas this time. One sole protester was spotted outside the grand opening of a new Market Basket store in North Andover last month.
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Many questions still remain, including what the board will do next in terms of searching for a more permanent replacement for someone who is considered one of the shrewdest grocers in the country.
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.