Egg has made its chief legal officer and company secretary Marcus Ezekiel redundant as part of a forthcoming costs restructuring exercise.
The online banking and investment provider has recently seen a 36 per cent fall in profit, from £15.7m to £9.9m, in the first quarter of 2005, due partly to a fall in lending income under European accounting rules. This came as a blow to Egg after it saw a shift from a pre-tax loss of £3.9m to a pre-tax profit of £5m in 2004.
As first revealed on www. thelawyer.com (28 April), the legal team of 10 will merge with the compliance and risk team, reporting to chief
risk officer Paul de Hoest. Ezekiel will not be replaced, but assistant company secretary Sue Windridge will become company secretary.
Most of Egg’s restructuring work is done in-house, but it also has an informal and flexible panel of law firms comprising Clifford Chance, Lovells, Olswang and Slaughter and May.
Executive vice-chairman Mike Harris and finance director David Doyle have also been made redundant.
Doyle implemented Egg’s withdrawal from the French market and instead concentrated on its core UK business of retail banking, rather than strategic M&A. The ensuing redundancies are a move to align senior management more closely with this strategy.
Prior to Egg, Doyle worked for Prudential, where he was head of corporate finance for three years, reporting to the group finance director.
