Insiders reveal how former McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook went from the chain's savior to its worst nightmare as sex-scandal accusations threaten to envelop the fast-food giant
, as a financing manager. He worked his way up at the company's London office, taking a few breaks to serve as CEO for two UK-based chains, Pizza Express and Wagamama.Same-stores sales had plummeted
Easterbrook admitted to the relationship but denied having sexual relationships with any other McDonald's employees. He turned his company-issued phone over to investigators at the time. McDonald's lawsuit accuses Easterbrook of deleting an email with explicit photos from his phone, apparently unaware the message remained on McDonald's servers.
Easterbrook promoted David Fairhurst to lead McDonald's global HR a few months after he became CEO. Fairhurst moved from London to McDonald's Oak Brook headquarters. The two were close, as two Brits working to reinvent the American fast-food giant. Two former employees questioned how McDonald's could handle HR complaints if its own head of HR was flirting and drinking with employees. A current employee who works on the global people team said Fairhurst's alleged behavior was not necessarily seen as something that could impede investigations at the time. Instead, she said, it was simply sad.
But unlike Easterbrook, who was fired without cause, McDonald's says Fairhurst was fired with cause. The company's current head of HR, Heidi Capozzi,that Fairhurst was fired after making women at the company uncomfortable on numerous occasions. "An American company was taken over by someone from overseas who was immune to the culture at McDonald's and said he was going to run it his way — and get those shareholder returns by any means necessary," said a former franchisee who left the company in 2017, in part because he disagreed with Easterbrook's strategic decisions.
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