The Financial Post reports in its Tuesday edition Rona is paying its former chief executive officer a $4.5-million severance after repudiating his growth-at-all-cost strategy that resulted in six straight years of earnings declines. The Post's Nicolas Van Praet writes the home improvement chain dismissed Robert Dutton on Nov. 8, 2012, after large shareholders fed up with the company's anemic return on capital pressed the board to make a management change. Rona has since hired Robert Sawyer, a grocery industry veteran, as CEO. Under the oversight new executive chairman Robert Chevrier, Rona is retrenching to its most profitable businesses in a strategy expected to be outlined in May. Among the changes Rona will make is the sale of its commercial contracting unit. In an interview with Montreal's La Presse newspaper in February, after he was ousted, Mr. Dutton said a $14.50-per-share hostile offer for Rona by American rival Lowe's Cos. progressively isolated him from the board. He said he believes he was sacrificed to calm unhappy institutional investors who were set to launch a proxy fight. "I'm not bitter. ... I'm simply sad," Mr. Dutton was quoted as saying. "I didn't merely lose a job. I lost my life."