VETERAN executive and company director Brian Healey has retired as chairman and from the board of embattled shopping centre owner Centro Properties Group and satellite Centro Retail Trust.
Centro remains locked in talks with its major creditors over billions of dollars in debt and negotiations with possible white knights to restructure the ailing group's finances or provide a fresh capital injection.
Mr Healey will be replaced by current director Paul Cooper, who the company says has experience in capital raisings, strategic planning and advisory roles gained at firms such as Freehills, Investec Wentworth and Chronworth Advisory. Mr Cooper is also a director of AXA Asia Pacific Holdings.
Mr Healey, who has been a director of Centro since 1993, told BusinessDay that Centro had a positive outlook and he would not have made the decision to retire if he thought the company's future was in doubt.
He said Centro's corporate structure, and that of its trust satellite, were not overly complex and that its growth strategy was aimed at building it up for the benefit of investors.
"Subsequently it has looked complicated, but everything that was done over the years was done to add shareholder value and, in fact, that is indeed what was accomplished," he said.
Mr Healey oversaw Centro's massive fall from grace last year when former chief executive Andrew Scott shocked the board with the announcement that the shopping centre owner and operator faced a $3.9 billion debt funding shortfall.
Shares in Centro collapsed from about $6 to a low of 23¢. They closed yesterday at 29¢, up 1¢.
"I am not using the world markets as an excuse," he said. "No doubt, we and others have been hit by the perfect storm, but people talk about (Centro) being complicated — it didn't seem complicated at the time and it wasn't complicated for complication's sake, it was done for shareholder value."
Mr Healey said he was not retiring from work altogether. He will remain a director of chemicals company Incitec Pivot, which also has an aggressive growth strategy at the moment.
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