Domino’s Pizza has announced that Paul Doughty, chief financial officer, has resigned and will step down from the board at the end of the calendar year, after less than six months with the company.
Chief executive David Wild will take on responsibility for the group’s finance activities until a replacement is found.
On current performance the company said: “The board takes this opportunity to reiterate the outlook statement from 14th October 2015 which highlighted the strong performance of the business during the third quarter and the solid start to the fourth quarter. The board remains comfortable with current market expectations for full year 2015 results.”
At Moneysupermarket.com, as chief financial officer, Doughty led the company through the then largest European IPO of an internet stock in 2007. Prior to that he was finance director of the UK business of Morse plc an international FTSE250 technology company.
Nick Batram, analyst at Peel Hunt, said: “Having spoken to the company, the reason being given for Paul’s exit is that ultimately the move wasn’t right for him, being his first involvement a food services franchise business (previously Paul was at Moneysupermarket.com and Morse Plc).
”To lose one CFO in a year looks unfortunate, to lose two looks careless. There may be different reasons for the two departures but Paul’s exit is bound to raise concerns about the working environment at executive level. Given this, the Board has no room for error with regard to the next CFO. Perhaps the ideal scenario would be an internal appointment but we believe this is unlikely.
”As with the previous CFO’s departure, Paul’s exit is totally unconnected with the underlying trading performance of the business. We recently met with management and the tone was very much upbeat, as confirmed in this morning’s announcement. The risk to forecasts in the short-term very much remains on the upside.”
