Top jobs under threat as Elior plans reshuffle

Catering and hospitality firms Avenance and Eliance Restaurants, the UK operating subsidiaries of French contract catering company Elior, are being restructured - a move that could lead to top-level redundancies.
Duplicate director roles within the two 13-strong executive teams at Avenance and Eliance are likely to be reviewed "over a period of time" following their merger to form a new company called Elior UK.
"There will be a low level of redundancies but some jobs are duplicated," commented an industry source. "It is likely it will just have one finance or marketing director."
A statement from Elior UK said that only seven directors, including former Avenance chief executive Michael Audis, would manage the operating companies and their subsidiaries, to "maximise efficiency".
Members of the new executive committee will include former Eliance finance director Tim Doubleday, former Avenance marketing director Ian Styles, and former Avenance sales director Andrew Mortimer. Tim West, former chief executive and chairman of Avenance, has become a non-executive director of Avenance.
The company also announced the creation of two separate divisions, which will mean that schools and healthcare catering will no longer be handled by Avenance.
Avenance, led by its current managing director of operations, Timothy Gurney, will concentrate entirely on business and industry catering. Education, healthcare and defence will now fall under the remit of the Elior UK Specialist Market division. Mike Nelson, former managing director of Eliance, will head this division, which will also include the concession catering businesses of Eliance Restaurants, Azure and Digby Trout Restaurants, plus vending and facilities management contracts.
Audis explained: "We need to ensure we have the organisational structure in place to provide the platform for our ambitious growth targets over the next three years. That is what these changes are about."