Paddy Power has looked beyond Ireland and appointed a Scot as its new chief executive.
Andy McCue is head of the bookmaker’s UK and Irish retail operations and has been with the company for eight years. He replaces Patrick Kennedy, who announced in May that he would be leaving the business after a decade in the role.
The new chief executive, a Cambridge graduate, was credited with transforming the profitability of its UK business and handling regulatory matters for the company.
“Andy is the ideal leader to drive Paddy Power’s next phase of growth,” Nigel Northridge, its chairman, said.
Paddy Power shares have fallen by 16 per cent this year with the bulk of the decline coming after Mr Kennedy announced his departure. Analysts expected a bounce on the appointment of Mr McCue, who presided over a unit with £1.6 billion of revenue and 3,000 staff, but shares dipped 0.2p to 52p.
Advertisement
The appointment of Mr McCue was delivered in an unusually sober tone by the bookmaker, which is often prone to descriptions such as “our Australian business continues to perform as spectacularly as a Tim Cahill volley” and which extols the social media prowess of a beer-drinking toy squirrel called Barry O’Rio in its results announcements.
Paddy Power stressed that it conducted a lengthy search for its new chief executive and had considered a number of external candidates.
Mr Kennedy described the appointment as “a great day for Paddy Power”. He was scheduled to leave in April but will instead exit in January, when he hands over to Mr McCue.
He said that it had been “as fun and as interesting a job as anyone could hope to have” when he revealed his decision to leave.