JOHN WILLIAMSON, the chief executive of Topaz, a petrol chain owned by Denis O’Brien, is leaving the company.
Topaz has informed suppliers of Williamson’s departure. It said that Sean Corkery, a non-executive director of the company, would act as interim chief executive.
Corkery, a former Dell executive, is chief executive of Siteserv, a company also owned by O’Brien that provides services to building and utility projects.
A Topaz spokesman said that Williamson’s departure to pursue other opportunities was amicable. “John leaves with the company’s very best wishes,” he said.
Williamson joined Topaz in 2009 as chief financial officer and became chief executive in 2012. Before joining Topaz, he worked in Alphyra, a mobile top-up and payments company.
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O’Brien took control of Topaz, the country’s biggest fuel retailer, earlier this year after buying the company’s IBRC debt, which had a face value of €340m.
In its note to suppliers, the company said Williamson had “made a great contribution to the company as finance director and, more recently, as chief executive and has led the company through a challenging period with great success”. Topaz had revenues of €3.2bn in the year to the end of March 2013 and made an operating profit of €12.7m before exceptional costs.
The Topaz board will now begin a process to find a successor for Williamson. In May, Topaz made two high-profile director appointments with the addition to the board of former taoiseach Brian Cowen and Colm Doherty, who was managing director of AIB.
Topaz was formed from the merger of the Statoil and Shell service station networks in Ireland by Ion Equity, a finance house. The company has 1,600 employees and operates from 334 sites throughout Ireland.