Michael Chadwick to leave Grafton Group after 41 years
Michael Roney, the outgoing chief executive of specialist distribution and outsourcing group Bunzl, will replace Mr Chadwick on the Grafton board and assume the role of group chairman as of the beginning of next January.
Grafton owns a number of builders merchants businesses across Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as the Woodie’s DIY retail chain here.
It announced yesterday that Mr Chadwick had decided to retire from his role of non-executive chairman and step down from the board at the end of 2016. It said that it had conducted a thorough search for his successor.
Mr Chadwick joined Grafton in 1975 when it was called Concrete Products of Ireland. He was appointed to its board four years later. As executive chairman, he led the business from 1985 to 2011, including overseeing its international expansion, before being succeeded by current chief executive Gavin Slark.
He has been the group’s non-executive chairman for the past five years.
Mr Slark paid tribute to Mr Chadwick’s entrepreneurial leadership through a “remarkable phase of growth and development to become an international building materials business,” adding that his “outstanding stewardship of the board will be greatly missed”.
