By Siddharth Cavale and Gayathree Ganesan
(Reuters) - Oreo cookies maker Mondelez International Inc (O:MDLZ) said it appointed Dirk Van de Put, the chief executive of Canadian frozen foods maker McCain Foods, to take over the top job from Irene Rosenfeld.
Shares of the company, which also reported second-quarter revenue that scraped past estimates and raised its dividend, were down marginally on Wednesday morning.
Rosenfeld's departure caps a tenure that included battling shareholder activism from Bill Ackman and Nelson Peltz and a failed bid for Hershey Co (N:HSY).
Van de Put, a seasoned packaged foods executive with a resume that includes stints at Coca Cola Co (N:KO) and Mars Inc, will also become chairman after Rosenfeld retires next March.
Mondelez said it picked Van de Put due to his experience of working in both developed and emerging markets, and his recent success in driving sales more than 50 percent at McCain Foods.
"Dirk is a seasoned CEO who has grown both top and bottomline in challenging circumstances," Rosenfeld told CNBC in an interview.
Rosenfeld been associated with the company for more than 11 years, first as the CEO of Kraft and then as the CEO of Mondelez after it was spun off from Kraft in 2012.
Her departure comes on a day the world's second-largest confectionary company posted its biggest drop in revenue from North America since the spin off.
Weak demand for confectionary items such as biscuits and chewing gum hit overall revenue, which fell 5 percent to about $6 billion.
Rosenfeld told CNBC that a cyberattack that significantly compromised the company's shipping and invoice systems during the last four days of the quarter had a "profound" effect on overall sales.
"It is taking us a bit of time to recover... I would not be looking for dramatic upside over the guidance we have given," Rosenfeld said.
The company reaffirmed its organic sales growth forecast of 1 percent for the full year.
Bringing in a new CEO has been long overdue because of slowing organic sales growth, said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan.
J.P. Morgan, however, said that hiring an outsider to focus on growth was probably not the news investors wanted to hear, as it indicates that Mondelez wasn't going to be bought anytime soon.
A media report earlier this year suggested that Mondelez was in talks to be acquired by Kraft Heinz, but the report was quickly shot down by the company.