Apple board member Andrea Jung under fire from SEC over missteps at Avon

The Wall Street Journal reports that Andrea Jung, the CEO of Avon Products, Inc. and the Apple board member, is facing a scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission over missteps at her company.

Longtime Avon Products Inc. Chief Executive Andrea Jung is fast losing her luster as a string of gaffes raises questions about her management skills. The latest bad news arrived Thursday, when Avon said it faces a pair of Securities and Exchange Commission inquiries. The cosmetics company also tossed out its sales targets, saying they are unreachable. Investors and analysts said those developments were perhaps less troubling than their impression that Avon has a pattern of operational missteps.

Avon shares dropped eighteen percent on the news. It wasn’t immediately clear how the development might reflect Apple, where Jung serves as one of the seven members of board of directors. In addition, Jung in December of 2010 became the co-lead director of Apple’s board to replace Jobs’s mentor and former Intuit CEO, Bill Campbell, also known as the ‘Coach’. Jung also heads the company’s compensation committee.

The press release accompanying Jung’s appointment to Apple’s board of directors quotes Steve Jobs as portraying her as “a strong CEO and marketer”. Jung, the only woman on Apple’s board of directors, was elected president of global marketing at Avon in 1996, an executive vice president in 1997, president and a director of the company in 1998, chief operating officer from 1998 to 1999, chief executive officer in 1999 and chairman of the board in 2001. Previously, she was executive vice president of Neiman Marcus and a senior vice president for I. Magnin. Forbes ranked her #25 in their 2009 100 Most Powerful Women (#7 in Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in 2006).