• WSJ (paid subscription required), Tuesday, January 24, 2006 11:33 AM

In what appears to be a case of a top executive not fitting in with the established culture of a close-knit company, Nike Chief Executive and President William D. Perez is leaving his post. He is being replaced by Mark Parker, who has been with Nike for more than two decades and is said to be a close ally of company founder Philip Knight, with whom Perez is said to have clashed. Knight was blunt about the reason for the change: Perez did not translate his experience in the consumer-products industry quickly enough to the athletic-footwear giant. In an interview, Knight praised Perez's efforts to bring more quantitative analysis to Nike's sales efforts--but added that Perez wasn't leading Nike executives like Parker and his co-president of the Nike brand, Charles Denson, but rather following them. "Maybe it's a little bit cruel," Knight said. "Bill was brought in here to mentor Charlie and Mark to someday step into a higher role. A lot of days they were mentoring him. It wasn't going the right way."

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