Sodexho chief Ford leaves after five years

David Ford, chief executive of contract caterer Sodexho in the UK and Ireland, left the company this week.

He will be replaced by Mark Shipman, who has been running Wood Dining Services in the USA since 1997. Sodexho bought the company in 2001.

It had been rumoured for some time that Ford was to leave Sodexho, although the company's marketing director Phil Hooper said the announcement of his departure had not been expected by many in the company.

Others attributed Ford's departure, which the company characterised as amicable in "order to pursue other interests", to a difference of cultures between the British and French sides of the business.

One insider said on Tuesday: "It was very much about a clash with the French. At the AGM David was the only senior director to give his speech in English."

Shipman is the second Wood Dining Services employee to take over a director's role at Sodexho this year. In January former finance director Charles McCole was replaced by Wood's Mark Adams.

McCole also left the company "to pursue other interests".

Ford, who had been chief executive of Sodexho for nearly five years, announced his departure in the same week that Sodexho Alliance was compared unfavourably with with rival Compass group in an article in the Wall Street Journal Europe.

The article quoted analysts who were concerned about falling growth rates at Sodexho and felt its shares were overvalued. But most of their worries were about the company's North American operations, which have been hit hard by rising unemployment in the USA.

by David Harris and Samantha McClary