Albertsons Companies has appointed Cody Perdue interim chief financial officer, effective immediately. The grocery group announced the appointment on 30 September 2026.
Perdue succeeds Sharon McCollam, president and chief financial officer, whose retirement the company had previously announced. McCollam remains with Albertsons as a senior adviser through the end of the current financial year, in late February 2027, to support the handover. The company has begun a search for a permanent chief financial officer.
Perdue has been at Albertsons since 2013 and most recently served as senior vice president of treasury, investor relations and risk management, a remit he had held since May 2025 and which he retains alongside the interim appointment. His earlier roles at the company included corporate finance manager, director of corporate accounting, vice president of finance and investor relations, and group vice president of treasury and investor relations. He began his career at Deloitte and Touche, and holds a master's degree in accountancy from the University of Notre Dame and a bachelor's degree in accounting from Boise State University.
Susan Morris, the chief executive, described Perdue as a highly respected finance leader.
Promoting the treasurer rather than reaching outside is the conservative choice, and in this case the conservative choice carries a message. McCollam is one of the better known finance chiefs in American retail, and her departure comes while Albertsons is still absorbing the collapse of its proposed merger with Kroger and the litigation that followed. Handing the role temporarily to the executive who already owns the balance sheet, the rating agency relationship and the investor dialogue keeps all three continuous while the board takes its time.
It also leaves the permanent search genuinely open. An interim appointment drawn from inside is not a signal that the internal candidate has the job, but it does mean the company can run a full external process without a vacancy at the top of finance.
The same announcement set out an expansion of the Albertsons board, with three new directors joining in mid October.
Perdue inherits a finance function that has been unusually exposed. The failed Kroger transaction left Albertsons carrying both the costs of a two year regulatory process and a strategic plan written on the assumption that it would complete, and the company has since had to restate its own growth case to investors as a standalone business.
The interim title is doing real work in that context. Rating agencies and lenders treat an unexplained vacancy in the finance seat as a risk factor in its own right, and naming an incumbent with six years of treasury and investor relations history closes that question on the day the retirement takes effect rather than at the end of a search.
Albertsons has not said whether Perdue is a candidate for the permanent role.
