Inspiring as it may be, Gutierrez's life is hardly a rags-to-riches saga. His father was a successful pineapple merchant in Havana who, in 1960, was deemed an enemy of Fidel Castro's state. As Hispanic Magazine put it earlier this year, "While many Cubans speak of coming to the United States with little more than pocket change and the clothes on their back, Pedro and Olga Gutierrez and their two sons were able to leave with $2,000 and 22 suitcases."
Gutierrez's business acumen appears beyond dispute. He worked his way up from an entry-level delivery and sales job in Mexico City at age 20 to be general manager of Kellogg's Mexican operations at age 30. When he took over the company in 1999, he shifted the measure of success from tons of cereal sold to the value of the products on Kellogg's shelves, Adelman said. Kellogg bought the Keebler cookie company and snapped up diet-conscious Kashi Co. to begin marketing health foods.
Four months into the top job, he announced the closing of the company's cereal plant in its hometown of Battle Creek, Mich., eliminating 550 jobs and plowing the savings into product development and marketing.
"That was a very difficult thing to do," Adelman said, "but it was the right thing to do for the company."
Kellogg stock has risen from $30.61 a share when he took over in April 1999 to $45.01 Friday. It dropped 1.54, or 3.4 percent, to close at $43.47 a share yesterday.
Engler, who as governor of Michigan worked with Gutierrez, said he was a natural choice for commerce secretary. Assignments in Mexico, Asia and Canada exposed Gutierrez to many of the most pressing trade issues. "He is clearly the most international leader that Commerce has ever had," Engler said.
But even admirers expressed bewilderment at his decision to move to the Commerce Department, a hodgepodge agency that controls the Census Bureau, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Many of those agencies will probably be on the chopping block when Bush unveils his 2006 budget request in February. Moreover, manufacturers -- especially textile and furniture makers -- have been pressuring the department to take a firmer stand against international competitors, while the White House presses forward with an aggressive free-trade agenda, including a yet-to-be ratified Central American Free Trade Agreement and a push to create a hemisphere-wide free-trade zone.
This spring, Gutierrez was rumored to be on the short list to take over Coca-Cola Co. until he took his name out of consideration.
"He had been considered for a number of companies that were far bigger than Kellogg's, and he always bowed out," Larson said. "I guess this must have been an opportunity he couldn't turn down."
Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
