Waterford Wedgwood's chief financial officer, Paul D'Alton, has resigned from the company after less than a year in the job. Una McCaffrey reports.

Mr D'Alton's departure to join US firm AgCert International came as a surprise to the market and prompted a 36 per cent drop in Waterford's share price.

Investors had been expecting him to oversee the release of a trading update in advance of Waterford's financial year-end on March 31st and to sign off on the group's full-year accounts.

A statement issued by Waterford Wedgwood yesterday confirmed that Mr D'Alton had resigned as both chief financial officer and a director of the company. He is being replaced immediately by Waterford company secretary Patrick Dowling, who will hold the chief financial officer post on an acting basis.

Waterford chief executive Redmond O'Donoghue said Mr D'Alton had played an "important and constructive role" at the company. Mr O'Donoghue wished him "every success" and described Mr Dowling as "a most able replacement".

Mr D'Alton was brought in to Waterford last April to help solve what was, at the time, becoming a financial crisis for the company. He has since overseen the sale of the firm's All-Clad cookware company, a €100 million rights issue and the €58 million acquisition of Royal Doulton.

The move to AgCert, which is setting up a base in Dublin, has raised questions among market-watchers.

Hints of recent poor trading at Waterford have been slipping into the market, most recently in the debt research publication, Distressed Weekly.

That newsletter's February 21st edition referred to a 10 per cent drop in January sales at Waterford Wedgwood. The firm has not yet discussed January sales with the market but Mr D'Alton's departure has given rise to new curiosity on the issue.

This will be compounded by news that rival ceramics firm Lenox is performing poorly.

The merger of two large US department store groups has also been identified as a potential problem for Waterford, with the move expected to create output pricing problems for the firm.

Waterford Wedgwood is expected to offer some update next week on trading. Analysts agreed yesterday that business has probably been challenging for the company in recent times.

NCB's John Sheehan was doubtful on how successful the company can be in passing on planned price increases to its customers. Neil Clifford from Goodbody Stockbrokers expressed concern about the uncertainty that Mr D'Alton's exit will create.

Shares in Waterford closed last night at 4.4 cent, down 6.4 per cent on the day. They earlier touched a low of three cent, a level which values the company at less then the value of its recent rights issue.

At AgCert, Mr D'Alton will hold the position of chief financial officer.

The firm is involved in offering solutions on emissions requirements set out by the Kyoto Protocol.

Before joining Waterford almost a year ago, Mr D'Alton had served as chief financial officer of Bank of Ireland. Earlier again, he had served as chief financial officer with Aer Lingus.

He took over the finance function at Waterford after leading the independent directors during the Riverdeep buyout in 2003.