
Good morning.
I spoke Friday with one of the newest members of the Fortune 500 club—Thibaut Mongon, CEO of Kenvue, which spun off from Johnson & Johnson in May. The company generated about $15 billion in sales last year, from popular brands like Tylenol, Listerine, Neutrogena, and Band-Aid, which would have landed it around No. 275 on last year’s 500 list. (Kenvue spun off largely free of the liabilities from lawsuits involving baby powder, which stayed with the mothership.)
Mongon called it the “assignment of a lifetime" to take this portfolio of iconic brands and write the next chapter of consumer health. I asked the 20-year J&J veteran what he could do as an independent company that he couldn’t do at J&J. His answer: