7 months ago
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The newly promoted CEO of Derrimon Trading Company Limited, Ian Kelly, says he will be using 2021 as a base year for taking the company forward.
The year 2021 was the time when revenues shot up 39 per cent to $17.74 billion and profit increased 44 per cent to $448 million. Kelly says he wants to get back to those levels of company performance and fully recover from several crises that have hit Derrimon recently, beginning with the COVID-19 pandemic and continuing with a major cyberattack and business-halting damage to its operations in the United States.
“We’re not happy about that. The truth is, we will have to ensure that we do everything on a daily basis, hourly basis, weekly basis, to ensure that we improve,” Kelly said, noting that at the very moment he was actually on the ground actively working with the Derrimon team.
Derrimon Trading announced the promotion of Kelly, saying the former chief financial officer took up his new position on January 1, 2025, replacing Derrick Cotterell, who will remain executive chairman.
The group’s full-year results are pending but as of September 2024, nine-month revenue was down by 18 per cent to $11.6 billion, while profit plunged 58 per cent. In 2023, full-year revenue totalled $18.7 billion from which the group earned profit of $182 million.
Cotterell said that after 26 years at the helm of the company he founded, it was time to make way for fresh ideas. The succession has been five years in the making, he advised.
“It may be sudden to the market, because we couldn’t have announced it but to the people in the know. [But] it’s not a sudden thing; it’s something I’ve been planning over the last five years,” Cotterell said, adding that the move was seen as vital for organisational growth.
“As a philosophy, I believe that organisations need to grow, and I think the leadership of the organisation is very important in terms of growth. I think individuals in the organisation need to feel that they can grow, so I don’t believe in being, like, CEO for life or chairman for life; that’s not my philosophy at all,” Cotterell declared.
As for Kelly: “He is that kind of calibre; he’s the calibre that could lead a bigger organisation than Derrimon Trading,” the executive chairman said of the new CEO.
In its statement regarding the succession, Derrimon said over the years Kelly had spearheaded many key mergers and acquisitions; the initial IPO in 2013, when the company went public and listed on the junior market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange; and negotiating and securing funding for Derrimon’s big projects, including the $4-billion additional public offering of shares in 2021.
Meanwhile, the Derrimon board has just approved a new business plan for 2025. Kelly said the plan carries a new set of strategies, but declined to specify the new goals.
“With the chairman at the helm of dealing with some strategic things, I am more dealing with much of the operational things; that’s what we need to push on, in order to really ensure that the company performs,” Kelly said.
Cotterell said the new plan is a mix of continued programmes and, in some instances, a new direction.
English (US) ·