And then there were five
Number of female Footsie chiefs shrinks again as Imperial Brands boss quits
by Jill Treanor
THE FTSE 100 is losing another female boss after Imperial Brands said Alison Cooper was leaving.
The 53-year- old has run the Gauloises and John Player Special maker for nine years and will depart once a successor is found.
One of just five women running FTSE 100 companies following the departure of Veronique Laury from B&Q-owner Kingfisher last month, Cooper provided no explanation for her decision to leave the company she joined 20 years ago.
But her departure was announced just days after a profits warning, blamed on a backlash against e- cigarettes in America, which wiped 13pc off Imperial’s share price, sending it to nine-year lows.
The other women running FTSE 100 companies are Dame Carolyn McCall of ITV, Emma Walmsley of Glaxosmithkline, Liv Garfield at Seven Trent and Alison Brittain at Whitbread.
Next month they will be joined by Alison Rose who takes over from Ross McEwan at Royal Bank of Scotland, becoming the first woman to run one of the ‘ big four’ High Street banks.
Rose ( pictured below) would have made it six women at the top of blue- chip firms – but Cooper’s looming departure will bring the total back down to five.
The tobacco company’s boss, who has been paid around £30m during her tenure, has given few interviews but earlier this year said that, while she enjoyed the occasional cigar, she did not smoke cigarettes.
She also told the Sunday Times that she did not try to discourage her two daughters from smoking. ‘I’ve always tried to bring them up in a way that they make their own choices in life from an informed position,’ she said.
She oversaw the decision to remove the word ‘tobacco’ from the Bristol-based company’s name – until 2016 it was Imperial Tobacco – and orchestrated its attempt to move away from conventional cigarettes to vapour-based products such as its e- cigarette, blu. The business employs 33,000, but its last remaining UK tobacco factory was closed in 2016.
The shares have halved since peaking three years ago and are down 2pc since Cooper took charge. Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said it ‘ seemed inevitable’ Cooper would be replaced given the downward trend.
Mould said: ‘The cigarette maker, like many of its peers, has bet on smokeless products for the future of its business.
‘Unfortunately regulatory and political pressure has been so intense that the shift to next generation products has been problematic.’
While the company says it is experiencing the ‘ biggest consumer shift in our history’ as smokers look for alternatives to tobacco, Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC, said the industry actually faced an ‘existential crisis’ after the US threatened to ban e- cigarettes. This is the area where the industry has been seeking growth. Unusually, Imperial is also looking for a chairman to replace Mark Williamson, a search which has been under way since February. He said Cooper – who grew up in Kingston upon Thames and went to the local grammar, Tiffin Girls’ School – had worked ‘tirelessly’ during her 20 years at the company.
Williamson pointed to the £10bn in dividends paid out while she was boss.
The company has faced questions about its accounting policies and a spokesman said that it was looking at improving the ‘transparency’ of its financial disclosure. Shares rose 0.6pc, or 10p, to 1840p yesterday.