The chairman and chief executive of French hotel group Accor has been sacked by the company's board and replaced by a trio of executives, the company said on Tuesday.
In a statement after an emergency board meeting, Accor said board members had taken note of reservations by Denis Hennequin on company strategy and "had thus unanimously put an end to his mandate effective April 23, 2013."
The board of Accor -- Europe's biggest hotel group and owner of chains Ibis, Mercure and Sofitel -- is dominated by private equity groups Colony Capital and Eurozeo which have grown increasingly dissatisfied with Hennequin, a celebrated French executive hired away from Mc Donalds Europe two years ago as per an AFP report.
The impending eviction of Hennequin had been reported by several media sources for days and sent shares in Accor tumbling two percent on Tuesday despite the market soaring more than 3 percent overall.
Centre to the rift between Hennequin and his board was a strategy demanded by Colony and Eurozeo for Accor to unload its property holdings in order to turn itself into a hotel franchise business.
Hennequin was carrying out this mandate, but not fast enough for the activist funds that together own about 20 percent of Accor.
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