[Point Tupper, NS]—There’s been a major shakeup in senior management of NewPage Port Hawkesbury’s (Nova Scotia) parent company, with the departures of three senior personnel.
NewPage Corp. announced Tuesday (June 15) that Thomas Curley had resigned as president and chief executive officer, and as a director with NewPage. Mark Suwyn also resigned as chair of the board of directors while Michael Edicola resigned as vice-president of human resources.
Curley was just appointed to the position in February.
Robert Nardelli was announced as a director and non-executive chair of the board. Nardelli is CEO of Cerberus Operating and Advisory Company, an affiliate of NewPage’s controlling stockholder of NewPage.
An executive search committee has been formed to look at internal and external candidates for CEO.
In a news release, Nardelli thanked the men for their work at NewPage. He told a conference call with investors and analysts that new leadership will allow the company to take advantage of an improving industry.
“Certainly, in the case of the CEO, there was mutual agreement after a relatively short period of time that a change would be appropriate,” Nardelli said. “I think in the chairman’s case, with Mark, as I said, a long and distinguished career who certainly had made significant contributions and was in a transitional phase, so I wouldn’t read anything into those management changes . . . I think the senior leadership team that is here today in Dayton have their hand firmly on the throttle and are running the business day-to-day.”
During the conference call, NewPage also provided an update on its financial performance. David Prystash, NewPage’s senior vice-president and chief financial officer, said business is proceeding much as the company expected during its last update in May, when they indicated NewPage was seeing its sales improve and wasn’t expecting to take any additional market-related downtime.
Its mills are seeing some downtime, as a good deal of maintenance is normally performed in the second quarter of the year.
Prystash noted NewPage’s mills are about 90 per cent integrated, meaning they mostly produce their own pulp. He said recent price increases for pulp, with more coming in May and June, are restoring NewPage’s cost advantage.
“The business is very robust, at the moment,” he said.
There is improved optimism across the board from magazines and catalogues, Nardelli said.
Curley will receive $1.1 million in severance pay, as well as a $165,000 prorated performance bonus. Suwyn will receive $2 million in severance. Edicola will get $650,000 in severance and a $243,000 prorated performance bonus.
Headquartered in Miamisburg, Ohio, NewPage is the largest coated paper manufacturer in North America, based on production capacity. It produces newsprint and supercalendered paper in Point Tupper (Nova Scotia).
NewPage also owns paper mills in Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
