Tui Travel finance chief to quit after accounts glitch

Tui Travel's finance chief Paul Bowtell is leaving the company after it was forced to restate its 2009 accounts. Europe's largest travel operator blamed the integration of accounting systems following the 2007 merger of the UK's First Choice Travel with the tourism division of Germany's Tui AG. Bowtell, 42, offered his resignation and will leave at the end of the year. Tui shares fell 6.6% on the news, dropping 15.1p to 215.3p, after it announced write-offs of £117m in its UK tour operator business. Tui declined to indicate whether Bowtell would get a payoff, saying "any terms are under discussion". He previously worked for First Choice as finance director and before that British Gas and WH Smith. Chief executive Peter Long paid tribute to him: "It is now clear that at the time of merger there were weaknesses in the legacy systems we chose to use in the Tui UK business. Despite the fact that this situation had built up over a number of years, Paul is behaving honourably and I am disappointed that he will be leaving the group. He is one of the most capable chief financial officers I know and we have had an extremely good working relationship over the six years that we have been a team." Announcing the £117m write-offs, Tui said that these were caused by "failures to reconcile balances in the IT systems of the retail and tour operators businesses in the UK". Tui said that following a £29m write-off at the time of its third quarter results in August, an ongoing audit had uncovered a further £88m of irrecoverable balances. This means that underlying operating profit in the year to September 2009 was £401m, £42m lower than previously reported. The write-offs will not have a negative impact on the group's cash position and net debt. The impact in 2010 has been limited to £5m and the company is confident of meeting forecasts with its full-year results, adding that debt will be lower than previous guidance. Tui UK is now under a new leadership team of Johan Lundgren, managing director of the northern region, and Colin McKinlay, who joined on 1 October as finance director from Homeserve. The company said the stronger trading highlighted in its last trading update had continued.