Former Countrywide CEO Alison Platt has been appointed to a second non-executive director post.
Already a non-executive director of Tesco, she now takes up the same role at veterinary products firm Dechra Pharmaceuticals.
Platt, who is also chair of Legal & General’s financial advice business, was CEO of Countrywide between 2014 and 2018. She introduced the ‘retail’ regime and quit after profits warnings took its shares to what was then a new low.
She had previously had senior roles at private healthcare business Bupa.
Tony Rice, chair of Dechra Pharmaceuticals, said Platt “brings significant capabilities and experience” to the role at the FTSE 250 firm.
Comments (25)
Tony, you always made me laugh
My info tells me she did not oversee it. Yes she was there but did not oversee it. Steve Annells convinced someone that he could run 3 subsidiaries including Fs and then left.
A CEO that doesn’t oversee their own strategy think that makes her worse.
Only met him (S Annells) once – seemed like a decent bloke, very happy to meet staff and talk to them but I am not sure how effective he was in his role. He might have done a good job with the one subsidiary but three was too much for him and he left, I think, within about 6 months of taking on the new responsibilities. As for his successor – PIE posting rules and etiquette would prevent me from publishing my opinion!
Whilst Alison may have been part of the problem, nobody ever told any staff member to not take a property on the market, or to not sell a property or to hire an idiot or to not canvass.
Each division had autonomy away from head office. The problem was that many of the MDs who made the 110milion profit were made redundant, ditto FSDs which left a void. When agency has a 50% plus turnover then just who will train them….well the answer was branch secretaries who had “been on a course”
I left 6 years ago and about 3 years ago i came into posession of a MDs FSds list and compared it to the chairmans league of 3 years previous. None of the current Mds or FSDs appeared as a winner in Chairmans. That my friends is Countrywide now…Administrators holding the Fort with the portcullis down and the moat dried up waiting for the Your move Army of Administrators to join them.
Alison was part of the problem but she was not the one who got rid of the very people who made the money.
Who was then because in your example of 6 and 3 years ago Ms Platt was at the helm?
Work it out
You did it!
“… branch secretaries who had “been on a course”
Dunno about your part of CW but when I was there ( I left in 2011) all “branch secretaries” had been removed into a local admin centre and were further removed (and thinned out) a year later when local admin centres were concentrated first into regional centres than, a little later, into a national centre. Any “branch secretaries” that slipped through that net had been converted into sales negs – I still wouldn’t have seen them as capable of training new starters but having got rid of dedicated Trainers, some MDs, Regionals etc, choices would have been thin on the ground.
You’re right R and R which is why Colin couldn’t answer my earlier question because I’m not convinced his memory is all that good about the events and the timeline.
Yes the secretaries were in regional centres but some of them became trainers. My point however is the experience and lack of MDs etc and that Alison never told people not to do the things that an experienced neg would do as in my first paragraph. Don’t divert one sentence re secretaries from the whole picture.
No but she did oversee the departure of a multitude of very profitable RSMs with ‘retail’ directors some of which had never sold a house.
Share price from nearly 600p to 100p, can’t be her fault can it!
I would like to be a brain surgeon. No, actually – I’d really love to be one.
Might be a bit of a problem, as I’m proper squeamish where blood is concerned (usually my own, that being said…) and my hands aren’t what you could describe as rock-steady when holding a pen never mind a scalpel or whatever tool you might need inside someone’s grey matter… but I’d still like a shot at it.
Now if I apply, I guess there’s an application process starting with me writing in stating my core skills; then a few interviews over the phone and face to face, and finally a panel of senior medical professionals that have to thoroughly assess me for the role.
If I get past all these stages, fulfil my afore-mentioned ambition… but lobotomise the first poor s0d I’m let loose on in the operating theatre I will feel proper sorry about it…
…but is the blame for me being in a position to cause such a catastrophic outcome really mine to shoulder?
Just saying.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game!
For once we appear to agree, ARC.
I’ll diarise this moment!
We would probably agree on more than not, should we have an old fashioned conversation than exchange messages on a website!
Could be interesting…
As we know CRL is a mere shadow of its former past. I spent 10 years building up a lettings branch from 200k to almost a milllion (just before I left). The AP regime was a shambles and I could see what was coming. Whilst working there I decided to fast track as a gas engineer course and now 4 years down the line I now run my own business and I’m a successful heating engineer! So PeeBee don’t give up that dream 😉
‘What do you know about unwell animals Ms Platt?’
Well, I left the last company sick as parrots and dead as Dodos.
‘Excellent. You’re hired!’
Easier work than being a Premier League manager.
Get team relegated, get £2m payoff, get another job, take them down, get payed off………
There seems to be a circus of professional directors who float from company to company collecting directorships like boy scout badges. Whatever disasters and destruction of shareholder value and job losses they leave behind seem to go unnoticed .
Collect their massive golden goodbye payouts with an executive role and then quietly slip into some cushy non -executive roles with reputations untarnished. In Platt;s case a £675k goodbye for wiping off hundreds of millions of shareholder value .What price success?
Let’s not forget there are a host of non -execs who sit and have sat on the BODS at CWD who despite the company’s descent into being at the mercy of the banks have happily collected their stipends going unnoticed and unaccountable .
Nice work if you can get it
Pass the port
Really?
April the 1st comes early this Year.
Oh dear, if she thinks she can run a pharmaceutical company as a retail outfit, then she’s barking!
She’ll need to make sure she is dogmatic in her approach.
She’ll definitely be striving for purrrrrfection this time.