The Air Jordan Fusion 5 surprise announcement came as Wrigley reported a 14 percent increase in third quarter earnings to $148 million, lifted by a sales rise in Asia, to exceed Wall Street expectations.

The news resulted in the biggest single day increase in Wrigley stock in at least 20 years. Shares jumped $6.40, or 13.7 percent, to close at $53.23 on the New York Stock Exchange.

The gum, candy and mint manufacturer once high flying stock had declined sharply since last year when it spent more than $1.4 billion to buy Life Savers, Altoids and other businesses from Kraft Foods Inc. an expensive, debt funded acquisition that it has struggled to absorb.

Bill Wrigley shook up the top management team in April as Chief Financial Officer Ronald Waters departed, but generating profits from the new businesses has continued to prove difficult.

He said it was solely his idea, endorsed by the board of directors, to bring in a new executive to run Air Jordan 20s the day to day operations while he focuses on strategy and innovation.

will have a greater opportunity to focus on key growth strategies for the company that will drive our global leadership position, Wrigley said at a rare news conference.

there so many opportunities to take advantage of out there that it makes sense to divide and conquer and allow me to work on some of the longer term growth strategies and some other things, and Bill works on running the company day in and day out. 59 year old Perez lasted barely a year as an outsider CEO at Nike, resigning in January over differences with Phil Knight, the company co founder.

Perez previously spent 34 years, eight of them as CEO, at Wisconsin based SC Johnson, which like Wrigley is a family owned business that derives more than half its sales internationally. He also will join Wrigley board of directors.

The executive said he has no concern about a recurrence of the conflict that led to his departure from Nike.

will Air Jordan 4s speak to the Wrigley team with a single voice, said Perez, who was first contacted by Wrigley about the job on Aug. 8. have a very clear understanding of how we going to operate. also said it unfair to assess the Kraft acquisition, which was announced in November 2004, in so Air Jordan 12s short a time and believes both Life Savers and Altoids are great businesses.

Quarterly net income amounted to 53 cents per share, compared with net income of $129.7 million, or 46 cents per share during the same period last year. Revenue grew 11 percent to $1.18 billion.

Excluding a 2 cent restructuring charge and a 1 cent tax gain, earnings were 54 cents per share, or 3 cents per share better than the consensus Air Jordan CDP estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

All per share figures reflect a 5 for 4 stock split on May 1.

For the first nine months of 2006, Wrigley reported net income of $401 million, or $1.44 per share, down 5 percent from $423 million, or $1.50 per share, a year earlier as a result of restructuring and stock option costs. Sales were $3.46 billion, up 13 percent from $3.05 billion.