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American takes helm of troubled Waterford Wedgewood

February 17, 2011

By Staff Reporter

Cameron will replace Redmond O’Donoghue as CEO. O’Donoghue, who is retiring, first came to prominence as sales and marketing director of Waterford Glass twenty years ago. He had been CEO of the Waterford Wedgwood group since 2000.
The group’s chairman, Tony O’Reilly, who is best known through his Independent News & Media corporation, described O’Donoghue as “an outstanding servant to Waterford Wedgwood.” Noting that the group experienced its most successful years in the early part of O’Donoghue’s tenure, O’Reilly also noted that “in the challenging years since then he has devoted much of his energy to restructuring our worldwide business.”
To describe recent years as “challenging” for Waterford Wedgwood is a considerable understatement. The new CEO, a 58-year-old graduate of Northeastern University, who has been working as the group’s Chief Operating Officer, faces formidable difficulties as he seeks to turn the company around.
Prior to his appointment, Waterford Wedgwood had most recently hit the headlines when it embarked on a massive job-slashing program. The job cuts, announced in May, targeted 1800 jobs worldwide. The redundancies, which are still being enacted, include the axing of a full one-third of the Irish workforce. The company’s plant in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, will be shuttered for good shortly. The group’s Royal Doulton division in the UK is also projected to lose 950 workers.
Those decisions have not led to any noticeable rally in the company’s share price. Even in the wake of Cameron’s appointment, which was generally welcomed by market analysts, the stock price rose by just five per cent to the less-than-dizzy heights of six euro cents ($0.10).
The share price is, of course, a reflection of the troubled recent past at the group. Waterford Wedgwood ran up a pretax loss of

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