Li & Fung Ltd. has appointed Joseph Phi, currently president of LF Logistics, as group president to lead the company’s Supply Chain Solutions operating groups, including business development.
Phi will continue as president of LF Logistics and will serve on the Li & Fung board of directors. He will report to group CEO Spencer Fung.
Phi succeeds Marc Compagnon, who has served as group president and executive director of Li & Fung Ltd. since July 2014 and has moved to the Fung Group as senior advisor, while remaining on the board of Li & Fung Ltd. as a non-executive director. Fung Group is the major shareholder of Li & Fung. The company’s core businesses operate across the global supply chain for consumer goods, including sourcing, logistics, distribution and retail.
“Our goal is to build the supply chain of the future to help our customers navigate the digital economy and to improve the lives of 1 billion people in the supply chain,” Spencer Fung said, “and I am confident Joseph is the right person to build on the solid foundation that Marc has built, and to take this to the next stage of development.”
The company credited Phi with having organically grown its logistics business over the past decade. He joined Li & Fung in 1999 and was previously executive director of Integrated Distribution Services Group from 2004 until its acquisition by Li & Fung in 2011.
Phi is chairman of GS1 Hong Kong, a not-for-profit dedicated to the design and implementation of supply and demand chains, global standards and solutions, and a director of its management board. He is also an advisory committee member of Hong Kong Trade Development Council’s Logistics Services.
Hong-Kong based Li & Fung specializes in responsibly managing supply chains of high-volume, time-sensitive goods for leading retailers and brands worldwide, with around 230 offices across more than 40 economies.
In the first half of 2018, Li & Fung’s sales fell 9.6 percent to $5.85 billion from a year earlier. The Logistics business saw sales increase 10.9 percent to $543 million from a year earlier.
Core operating profit in the first half decreased 18 percent to $124 million from the year-ago period. This was due largely to the decline in sales and a falloff in total margin in the Supply Chain Solutions business, which came as a result, the company said, of the shifting retail environment and customer destocking trend. Core operating profit in Logistics rose 15.1 percent to $38 million.