Transport giant Stagecoach rings the changes

VIRGIN Rail owner Stagecoach group is shaking up its board only days after Virgin’s failure to win the franchise to operate the West Coast Mainline train route which connects London, the West Midlands and the North West.

Chief executive Sir Brian Souter will become chairman and finance director Martin Griffiths becomes the new chief executive. Current chairman Sir George Mathewson is to retire as a director while non-executive director Garry watts will become deputy chairman.

Ross Paterson, director of finance and company secretary, is to be appointed to the board as finance director while a new non-executive director will be appointed who will chair the audit committee.

The changes will take effect from May1 next year.

Sir Brian Souter said, “I remain committed to the success of Stagecoach and consider now to be an appropriate time to plan to take a step back from the day-to-day management of the business.

“I fully support the board’s decisions to appoint Martin and Ross to their new roles, which reflects a further continuation of the transition in responsibilities that has occurred over recent years.

“With a combined shareholding of over 25%, my family and I remain committed shareholders in Stagecoach and I will devote whatever time is necessary to effectively discharge my responsibilities as chairman when that time comes.”

Meanwhile, in an interim management statement Stagecoach said the overall profitability of the group has remained good

Like-for-like revenue growth for the 12 weeks to July 22 was 4.1% in its UK bus regional operations, 6.8% in UK rail and 6.8% for its North America operations.

Virgin Rail Group saw revenue growth of 0.6% over the period.

However, revenues at the UK bus London operation were down 5.7%.
Stagecoach said this figure is consistent with its previous expectation that some less profitable contracts would not be retained as it restructured the acquired business and improved its overall profitability.

“The decline reflects the revenue lost from contracts that ended during the
year to 30 April 2012 but for the year as a whole to 30 April 2013, UK Bus (London) is well placed to maintain revenue with contract losses being offset by some contract wins and inflationary price increases on existing contracts,” it said.