Webster to step down as IHG chairman
DAVID Webster, the long-standing chairman of Intercontinental Hotels Group, is to stand down after eight years at the helm of the world’s largest hotel group.
A source close to Webster said that no date had been set yet for his departure, but that he is likely to leave later this year.
The owner of Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza brands has already kicked off a search for his replacement, with Sir Stuart Rose, the former chairman of Marks and Spencer, and Allan Leighton, the former Royal Mail chairman, touted as two possible candidates for the job.
Luke Mayhew, the former managing director of retailer John Lewis, who was appointed non-executive director of IHG last July, is also understood to be a likely candidate.
Webster, 66, joined IHG in January 2004, after seven years as chairman of Safeway. He was one of a trio of entrepreneurs who in 1977 formed Argyll, a grocery business that expanded rapidly and was involved in a number of takeover battles, including the firm’s failed bid for Distillers, which was sold to Guinness.
The group went on to buy the UK arm of the American supermarket Safeway in 1987 and grew the business into the UK’s fourth largest supermarket. Webster stepped down after seeing the group through a fierce bidding war that resulted in its merger with Wm Morrison in 2004.
Webster, son of a former Glasgow Herald London editor, Comyn Webster, was also formerly a non-executive director of Reed Elsevier, and served in the Royal Naval Reserve for eight years from 1962 to 1970.
He has also been chairman of Makinson Cowell, the capital markets advisory firm, since 2004.
News of Webster’s retirement comes just a year after chief executive, Andy Cosslett, stepped down, to be succeeded by the finance director, Richard Solomons.