European director flies ilion coop

Ilion's troubles have deepened as European sales director Charlie Stewart became the third senior employee to leave the networking distributor in the past month.

His resignation follows managing director Allan Mack's departure from the company on 2 July, while group product and marketing manager Serge Van Gorkum, whose decision to leave Ilion was announced on 30 April, exited on 30 June.

Stewart's resignation, accepted on 14 July by Wayne Channon, chairman, chief executive and managing director at Ilion, coincides with a huge sales restructure which has more than doubled the number of account managers in the company.

Stewart said he decided to leave the company for personal reasons ,but added: 'There are other factors in my decision, but it would be unfair to discuss them.'

He denied his decision to leave was based on not being offered the managing director role after Channon decided to occupy the role himself, but said: 'I felt I could have done the job in the UK.'

Following last year's departure of Roger Paul, Stewart and sales director Lynette Summerfield unsuccessfully applied for the position of managing director (PC Dealer 3 September).

Channon said Stewart had left the company for personal reasons and claimed the decision had nothing to do with the departure of Van Gorkum - the person to whom Stewart reported.

But Stewart said: 'Serge's decision to leave had an impact on my resignation, it was very disappointing and as he was my boss I was sorry he left.'

Channon said a restructure of the sales department had been completed, with a number of product managers being moved in a bid to increase the number of account managers from 18 to 40.

Customers have also now been shifted into Premier and SME divisions.

Channon said: 'This was the original structure but it was changed in January so there were more teams focused on products.'

He added: 'It was not my decision to change the structure at the beginning of the year and I believe it was a mistaken decision.'

Channon was quick to quash rumours that Summerfield was also intending to leave: 'I have asked her and she has denied it to me. I am not concerned about it.'