Sodexho Alliance has appointed François-Xavier Bellon as chief executive of its troubled UK and Ireland division.
Current chief executive Mark Shipman is to return to the USA for personal reasons and will leave the post at the end of March.
The company has suffered a string of setbacks in the past two years. Shipman was appointed in April 2002 after the group announced it had discovered accounting anomalies and serious errors of management in its UK subsidiary. Also, seven profit warnings have been issued in the last 18 months.
The UK and Ireland division has found it difficult to turn around its fortunes. The company has reported that the division's sales had fallen by 7.2 per cent during the first quarter of its current financial year.
Michael Landel, Sodexho's co-chief operating officer responsible for the UK and North America has welcomed the appointment. He said: “François-Xavier has shown he could produce results in his last job by turning around Sodexho's Mexican business. We are committed to bring UK margins back to the five per cent level of other areas of the group in the next two to three years.”
The problems of the UK division has dented Sodexho's performance over the past two years, prompting analysts to compare its growth unfavourably to Compass, its larger UK rival.
