Avon’s CEO will leave the company in March as the struggling beauty products maker continues a turnaround campaign.

Sheri McCoy has led the company for five years and sits on the board, but activist investors have pushed for a change in leadership.

Avon said Thursday that it has hired an executive search firm to help find McCoy’s successor.

“The platform is in place for a new CEO to continue accelerating the pace of change and take Avon to sustainable profitable growth,” McCoy said in a company release.

Barrington Capital Group had been pushing for significant action at Avon since 2015, when it sent a letter saying that “significant, immediate changes in leadership and strategic direction are needed.”

In March 2016, Avon announced that it was cutting 2,500 jobs.

Avon Products Inc. launched a three-year transformation plan last year and so far it has sold its North American business to private investment firm Cerberus Capital Management and realized $180 million in cost savings. But those efforts have been arduous.

The company on Thursday swung to a surprise loss of $45.5 million in the second quarter.

FedEx to forgo holiday surcharges

FedEx will skip special charges for most packages shipped during the holiday season as it seeks to undercut rival UPS in a fight for a larger share of the millions of items now bought online.

FedEx Corp. said Thursday that it won’t charge extra for peak-season residential deliveries unless the package requires extra handling, such as for very large items.

On an average day, FedEx delivers more than 12 million packages to businesses and homes, but that can jump to 25 million on peak days in December.

FedEx’s announcement comes two months after UPS announced new surcharges that will affect shipments in some weeks near Black Friday and Christmas.

Sapporo landing Anchor Brewing

Anchor Brewing Co., a century-old San Francisco brewer that helped pioneer the craft-beer movement, will be acquired by Sapporo Holdings Ltd., part of a push by Japanese beverage companies to seek growth on U.S. soil.

The business fetched about $85 million in the transaction, which is slated to close by the end of the month.

The deal reflects mounting pressure by craft brewers to find deep-pocketed partners as they face an increasingly crowded market. For Sapporo, the challenge is coping with a slowdown in its home country. Beer consumption in Japan has been on a steady decline in the last decade.

THE BOTTOM LINE

3% The increase in June in orders at U.S. factories, the Commerce Department said Thursday. The gains largely came from a 131 percent jump in orders for civilian aircraft, a category that can be volatile. U.S. manufacturing has been recovering from a slowdown in late 2015 caused by lower energy prices and a strong dollar that made American products more expensive overseas. Factories have responded with a relatively slight upturn in hiring.