BERN: Swiss-based Adecco, the world’s biggest temporary staffing group, said on Thursday that both its chief executive and finance chief have quit, as it posted strong first-quarter earnings on the back of improving sales in Europe.
“The fact that the board decided for an internal successor stands for continuity,” chairman of the board Rolf Doerig said in a statement of the decision to hand the reins to Dehaze, who joined Adecco in 2009. Thursday’s shake-up announcement cast a shadow over Adecco’s stellar earnings, which showed a 45-percent jump in net profit in the first quarter to €160 million ($182 million).
That was better than the expectations of analysts polled by the AWP financial news agency, who had anticipated a net profit of €145 million for the quarter. France meanwhile lost its place as Adecco’s largest market, with North America taking the lead for the quarter with 21 percent of total sales. In France, which accounted for a fifth of Adecco’s total sales, revenues slipped two percent during the quarter to €1.0 billion, hit by a weak construction sector.
Looking forward, the group said that based on the current economic outlook, it expects “revenue growth to accelerate in the second half of 2015”.
