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Huveaux loses chairman

06.11.08 | Philip Jones

Letts' parent Huveaux has lost its chairman and announced that its full-year results will fall short of expectations. John Van Kuffeler, founder and non-executive chairman, has resigned with immediate effect; Kevin Hand, senior non-executive director, has been appointed non-executive chairman as replacement. No reason was given for the abrupt changes.

However, the group admitted that its education business had been hit by the decision by the Government to abolish SATs for 14 year olds. "This announcement came without any forewarning and represented a complete u-turn from all previous announcements. This change will have a material effect on Huveaux, along with all other education publishers who had prepared materials for the courses already started in schools," the group said, adding: "For this specific reason, sales and profits within the Education Division will be significantly below expectations for 2008 and the outlook for this Division for 2009 is less certain."

It said that its Political Division continued to trade well and remained on course to meet expectations for the full year. But that overall, it now anticipated that the full year results, "whilst representing a solid performance in testing market conditions, will fall short of their [directors] previous expectations".

The business added that it had identified a number of new cost savings, mainly in head office, which, when fully implemented, will reduce annualised costs by up to £500k. It also reported that another non-executive director, John Clarke had resigned from his position with immediate effect.

• education
• Financial
• Huveaux
• Letts
• Philip Jones