UPDATE 1-Sara Lee CFO to leave company in 2009

CHICAGO, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Sara Lee Corp (SLE.N) Chief Financial Officer Theo de Kool will leave the company next year in a mutual decision between himself and Chief Executive Brenda Barnes, the food and household products maker said on Thursday.

The move by de Kool, 56, to leave the company at the end of the current fiscal year in June comes as Sara Lee looks to speed up new cost-cutting measures following an overhaul that saw it divest businesses that represented about 40 percent of the company's revenue.

Sara Lee said it is looking for a replacement.

"As we enter the next phase of our evolution, Brenda and Theo mutually agreed on the decision and timing for his retirement," said Jon Harris, a spokesman for Sara Lee, which makes Jimmy Dean sausage, Sara Lee bread and Kiwi shoe polish.

De Kool, who started at Sara Lee in 1990 as finance vice president for a Dutch subsidiary, became CFO in 2002.

He remained in that post after Barnes became chief executive in 2005.

Over the past three years, analysts have sometimes expressed frustration as the company has missed some of its financial forecasts, including its retreat in 2006 from its forecast a year earlier that it would have an operating margin of more than 12 percent by 2010.

More recently, some analysts also were frustrated when Sara Lee said in early November that it had suspended share repurchases because of conditions in the credit market, only to resume repurchases a day later after the company's stock fell.

Sara Lee shares were down 6 cents at $9.57 on Thursday afternoon. The stock is down 40 percent this year, compared with a 16.5 percent decline for the Standard & Poor's packaged foods index .15GSPFOOD. (Reporting by Brad Dorfman, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)