Five sacked directors named

Swinton chairman Patrick Smith has kept his role despite today’s dramatic clear out of the firm’s executive team over its parent company’s concerns about the sums they were paying themselves.

A spokesman for Covea, the ultimate parent company of both Swinton Holdings and Swinton Group Limited, said the five sacked executive board members are chief executive officer Peter Halpin, marketing director Nick Bowyer, finance director Anthony Clare, operations director Jackie Ordish  and IT & Business Change Director Adrian Hazeldine.

But, as chairman of Swinton Holdings, and hence at one step removed from the activities of the group, he said Smith had not been involved with the day to day running of the group.

He said: “As far as non-executives are concerned, they are not implicated in the situation. Patrick Smith is Chairman of the Swinton Holdings board, making him two steps removed from the day to day running of Swinton Insurance.”

Smith, who stepped down as chief executive of Swinton in 2009 to take up his current role as chairman, is due to hand over as chair of the Biba board to Andy Homer in the New Year.

Covea announced earlier today a wholesale replacement of the Swinton Group executive board.

It said that it was concerned that the former executive board has put their short term interests ahead of the long term interests of the company and its employees. The concerns centredd on the executive board’s performance-related share scheme payments, due to have been made in Q1 2012.

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