Safestyle appoints Michael Gallacher as new CEO

Hot on the heels of yet another profit warning last week, double glazing group Safestyle announced on Tuesday that Michael Gallacher will replace Steve Birmingham as its new chief executive officer.

Birmingham will retire from the board and the company by the end of this year in accordance with "long-established senior management succession plans", while Gallacher joins the board as CEO with immediate effect.

Gallacher has more than 20 years' commercial and operational experience of building and managing businesses in the UK and international. Most recently, he was CEO of UK dairy company First Milk, where he developed and implemented a major restructuring and turnaround strategy that delivered a £30m improvement in business profitability in 24 months.

Prior to that, he held a number of senior roles at Mars Inc., including UK managing director for Mars Petcare.

Non-executive chairman Peter Richardson said: "Steve has been instrumental in the company's growth over the last 19 years and I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of the board to thank him for his significant contribution. I am pleased that he will be remaining in the business to ensure a suitable period of continuity and an orderly handover to his successor.

"Mike is a great addition to the Safestyle team and I am pleased that he has agreed to join the board. His leadership qualities and commercial and operational experience, particularly in relation to performance improvement, will be invaluable to the business at this stage in its development."

Safestyle shares tumbled last Monday after the group issued another profit warning and scrapped its dividend.

The company, which also issued profit warnings in December and February and was slapped with an £850,000 fine from the Health & Safety Executive in April, said group revenues and underlying pre-tax profit for the year to the end of December 2018 were likely to be "significantly below" current market expectations, with profits heavily-weighted to the second half.

At 1000 BST, the shares were up 5.7% to 59p.