Ardagh chairman Paul Coulson to step down

Billionaire Irish financier Paul Coulson said on Tuesday he will step down in November as chairman of the Ardagh Group he has turned over the past 25 years into a multinational glass and metal containers giant.

Mr Coulson (71) will be succeeded by Herman Troskie, a South African lawyer and current group director, at the helm of Ardagh Group, its New York-listed Ardagh Metal Packaging subsidiary and the ultimate group holding company, ARD Holdings.

Mr Troskie (53) will step down from his current role as a partner and head of corporate, legal and tax advisory at Stonehage Fleming, an international advisory firm to investment offices of wealthy families, to take on his new role on a full-time basis in November.

Ardagh said that Mr Coulson will remain a director of the group companies and remain the main shareholder in ARD Holdings. Sources added that he has no plans to change his effective 36 per cent interest in the group, held through direct and indirect stakes and that the Dubliner will remain actively involved in the business.

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Mr Coulson has turned Ardagh, which traces its routes to the Irish Glass Bottle Company that was set up in Dublin in 1932, into one of the world’s largest glass bottle and metal containers makers since he first invested in the company in 1998 and took over as executive chairman.

Group sales have grown from €51 million at the time of the financier’s first involvement to the equivalent of more than $9 billion (€8.4 billion) last year, while earnings before interest, tax, deprecation and amortisation have ballooned from €10 million to the equivalent of €1.2 billion.

The chairman started on his international expansion in 1999 when the group acquired UK glass packaging company Rockware for £247 million (€287 million), culminating in 2016 in the $3.4 billion (€3.2 billion) purchase of a beverage cans business from US rival Ball Corp and the UK’s Rexam.

Before taking up the chairman role, Mr Coulson previously spent five years with PwC in London and Dublin, later establishing his own accounting firm.

In 1980, he set up Yeoman International and developed it into a significant leasing and structured finance business.

The group said that Mr Coulson’s imminent transition is the culmination of a succession process that, in recent years, has seen the appointments of Oliver Graham as chief executive of Ardagh Metal Packaging, and Michael Dick as chief executive of Ardagh Glass Packaging.

Mr Troskie qualified as a South African attorney in 1997, and as a solicitor of the senior courts of England and Wales in 2001. He has extensive experience in the areas of international corporate structuring, cross-border financing and capital markets, with a particular interest in integrated structuring for entrepreneurs and their businesses, according to Ardagh.

Based in Luxembourg, Mr Troskie has been a director of Ardagh Group since 2009, with the company saying he has been “closely involved with the growth and development of the group since then”.

Ardagh Group currently operates 63 metal and glass production facilities in 16 countries, employing more than 20,000 people.