BJ’s Wholesale CEO Lee Delaney has passed away: company

On Friday, BJ’s Wholesale Club announced that Lee Delaney, the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer, passed away unexpectedly.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Let's get a check on what's going on in markets here. We are still seeing a mixed picture at the moment. The S&P 500 slightly higher, which means another record for that index. The Dow a little bit up as well, as the NASDAQ trades slightly lower. But let's focus in on a couple of individual company stories.

The first of all has to do with the sad news that the CEO and president of BJ's Wholesale has unexpectedly died. Lee Delaney, the company is reporting, died unexpectedly. He was only 48 years old, according to data from Bloomberg. And the stock is trading a little bit lower. I mean, when you get sort of an unexpected event like this, not surprising here because there's a little bit of uncertainty, Brian Sozzi, about what's going to happen next. Presumably, BJ's would hopefully have some sort of succession plan in place.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, [INAUDIBLE] BJ's saying in its statement on the matter today that Lee Delaney who was 48 years old-- still, of course, a very young guy-- died due to, quote, "presumed natural causes." And you're seeing the stock, as you mentioned, Julie, under pressure. But worth noting here, Christopher Baldwin, he's the executive chairman of BJ's-- he's also the former CEO of BJ's-- Lee Delaney only took over for him in February of last year.

So just in terms of succession, at least right now, you have an executive chairman in Chris Baldwin, who knows the company very, very well, who, in many respects, put the company on its current [INAUDIBLE] path to perform how well it has been performing during the pandemic. So, if you're an investor here, you certainly don't want to see news like this, but you do have an experienced executive running the company right now.

JULIE HYMAN: Right, so we'll continue to watch that situation, see if there's any more news on that front in terms of what a management going forward will look--