TUI Travel CFO to resign after IT debacle

The CFO of TUI Travel is set to resign after the company was forced to make
an £88m write-down because of weaknesses in its IT systems.

Paul Bowtell has fallen on his sword because the travel giant uncovered an
£88m black hole in its 2008/2009 accounts.

The mistakes came about because its IT systems failed to reconcile balances
properly in TUI UK’s retail and tour operator businesses.

As part of the year-end closing process, TUI said today , a full and detailed
review of systems and processes has been conducted.

“TUI Travel is satisfied that the weaknesses in the systems have been
rectified,” the company said.

“Following discussions between Peter Long, chief executive and Paul Bowtell,
chief financial officer, Paul has decided that it is appropriate to offer his
resignation and they have agreed that he will leave the company at the end of
2010.”

The extent of the weaknesses in the system were only fully known after the
systems after an integration process was completed.

Peter Long said: “It is now clear that at the time of merger there were
weaknesses in the legacy systems we chose to use in the TUI UK business.

Despite the fact that this situation had built up over a number of years,
Paul is behaving honourably and I am disappointed that he will be leaving the
group.

“He is one of the most capable chief financial officers I know and we have
had an extremely good working relationship over the six years that we have been
a team.

“I have specifically asked Paul to remain with the business to see through
the full year audit and production of our preliminary results. I will miss
working with him and wish him every success for the future.”

TUI UK is now under a new leadership team of Johan Lundgren, MD Northern
Region and Colin McKinlay, who joined on 1 October 2010 as finance director from
Homeserve plc, where he was UK finance director.

Further reading:

Read
the TUI statement in full

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