The new CEO of commodity trader Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) has said the sudden resignations of its previous boss and CFO were not linked to strategy disputes or financial issues.
The company announced that CEO Gonzalo Ramirez Martiarena left last week to “pursue other opportunities” after 13 years, while CFO Armand Lumens, who joined in March 2017 from Shell, had stepped down for “personal reasons”.
CEO Ian McIntosh told the Financial Times: “I would never have accepted the role of CEO if I had even the slightest concern that there were problems either financially or strategically within the company.
“I think that is a really important thing to get. These two departures were in no way related to strategy or financial issues.”
He added there was no crisis at LDC.
“Our performance to the end of September is an improvement on last year . . . we believe we will deliver pretty decent year-end results,” McIntosh said.
LDC is controlled by Margarita Louis-Dreyfus, who is trying to increase her stake from 80% to 96.6% through a buyout of other family shareholders.
