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I Know It Was You, Freda

The midsummer departure of Estée Lauder’s Tracey Thomas Travis raises some renewed questions about the future of the family-controlled, $23 billion cosmetics company.

Tracey Travis
By all accounts, Travis is highly respected within Lauder and on Wall Street, and her departure won’t be taken well. Photo: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
Rachel Strugatz
July 17, 2024

The last week has been a whirlwind at The Estée Lauder Companies, which announced on July 11 the retirement of longtime C.F.O. Tracey Thomas Travis amid a series of rolling layoffs. None of this will come as a surprise to readers of Line Sheet, where the fraught relationship between Travis and Lauder C.E.O. Fabrizio Freda has been a running plotline in our coverage of the tumultuous ELC saga—the family divisions, the boardroom disagreements, and all the delayed decision-making about brands and distribution channels, etcetera. But to watch it unfold, as the stock price hits historic lows in real time, is sort of grimly fascinating.