Bed Bath & Beyond faces leadership void after Gustavo Arnal’s death

Embattled retailer Mattress Bathtub & Past wants to maneuver rapidly to shore up its government ranks after the sudden dying of its chief monetary officer, an knowledgeable instructed The Publish on Monday.

Gustavo Arnal jumped to his dying from the 18th ground of his luxurious Manhattan residence constructing early Saturday. The 52-year-old government lately introduced the corporate secured a $500 financing deal to assist it restructure whereas addressing declining gross sales.

“The corporate is in disaster,” chapter legal professional Eric Snyder of Wilk Auslander instructed The Publish on Monday. “Now that there’s a emptiness for the CFO, the logical subsequent step is to usher in a restructuring officer to both restructure the corporate with the creditor teams or promote the corporate by means of an organized chapter course of.”

The retailer, which is making an attempt to stave off chapter, is anticipated to call Arnal’s successor earlier than the markets open on Tuesday, according to a Wall Street Journal report, amid a management vacuum and probably damaging litigation.

The C suite has seen an exodus after shedding its chief government, Mark Tritton, and its chief merchandising officer, Joe Hartsig, on June 29. Final week, Chief Working Officer John Hartmann stepped down.

Individually, Arnal was named in an Aug. 23 insider buying and selling lawsuit in opposition to the corporate alleging that he misled buyers. The criticism, filed in federal court docket in Washington, D.C., additionally named activist investor Ryan Cohen, who dumped his shares within the retailer final month to bag $68 million.

The criticism alleges that “disclosures made by sure of our buyers about their holdings…have been materially false or deceptive,” the company said in a securities filing.

Mattress Bathtub & Past mentioned it’s in “early levels of evaluating the criticism” however believes that the “claims are with out benefit.”