THOMAS COOK is dumping three board members in a leadership clearout to drive recovery from the profit warnings and funding crunch that have savaged its share price.
Among those departing is Bo Lerenius, who has been caught up in a string of boardroom reshuffles and corporate calamities over the past year.
“Bo Lerenius and Peter Middleton decided to retire to allow the new chairman, Frank Meysman, more flexibility to refresh the board at this stage of the company’s development,” the world’s oldest travel company said. The company said David Allvey, who was due to go after nine years, would leave with Lerenius and Middleton, a former Thomas Cook chief executive, at its annual shareholder meeting on February 8th. All three are non-executive directors. Senior non-executive director Roger Burnell had also agreed to retire.
Thomas Cook dropped its chief executive in August and installed Meysman last month after arranging a new £200 million lifeline in November, its second new financing arrangement in five weeks. The holiday operator has been hit hard by tough trading, especially in Britain where its core customer base of families with young children is struggling in tough economic conditions.
Its shares lost over 90 per cent of their value last year.
“To say that 2011 was a challenging year for our group is an understatement,” Meysman said in the company’s annual report, published yesterday.
“During the year, the board was disappointed that management performance in certain areas fell short of the standards that we demand. Decisive action was taken,” he said. Thomas Cook is being run by Sam Weihagen on an interim basis while it searches for a chief executive to replace Manny Fontenla-Novoa.
The annual report showed Fontenla-Novoa received a payoff worth £1.17 million, incorporating payment of 12 months basic salary but no annual bonus.
Lerenius has been caught up in a string of boardroom reshuffles and corporate calamities over the last year as chairman of infrastructure firm Mouchel and a member of the audit committees at security firm G4S and property group Land Securities.