Cameron resigns from Waterford Wedgwood

PETER CAMERON, the man charged with leading the restructuring at struggling luxury goods group Waterford Wedgwood, left his post yesterday with immediate effect.

His departure comes just days after the end of the company's 2007/08 financial year. The company has installed group director David Sculley as interim chief executive.

Mr Cameron has been chief executive since September 2005. He joined the group as chief operating officer a year previously when Waterford Wedgwood sold its US All-Clad subsidiary, where Mr Cameron had been CEO.

Mr Sculley is a former chief executive of HJ Heinz's US operations, where he worked closely with then Heinz chairman Sir Anthony O'Reilly. He has been a non-executive director at Waterford Wedgwood since December 1997. He is also a partner in New York-based investment firm Sculley Brothers.

Analysts were yesterday resigned to further restructuring at the group following Mr Cameron's departure. While news that he was stepping down was not seen as a surprise, the immediacy of the decision was. Markets reacted by marking the shares down fractionally to 1.5 cent.

At the time of Mr Cameron's appointment, Waterford Wedgwood chairman Sir Anthony O'Reilly said he was "the best manager to tackle head-on the needs of the company".

However, despite a series of fundraisings and an almost continuous period of restructuring during his tenure, the company has now failed to record a growth in sales since 2000.

"We haven't seen any tangible benefits [ of the restructurings]," said NCB analyst John Sheehan. He noted that sales of the company's luxury goods were still falling and said he was expecting it to report a loss of €100 million before exceptionals for the year that ended on Monday.

Barry Dixon, analyst at company broker Davy, said Mr Cameron had done a good job in terms of rationalising the business "but he was unfortunate to run into a number of headwinds, not least the slowdown in the US economy and the slide in the value of the dollar".

Anthony Jones, the recently appointed chief financial officer, is seen as the most likely long-term CEO among internal candidates and Sir Anthony made a point in yesterday's statement of praising his "keen financial skills" and "very positive impact" since his appointment.

Mr Sculley last night promised "an all-out attack on our cost structure" and signalled renewed interest in targeting Asian markets.