Harland & Wolff suffers another senior departure

The troubled shipbuilder best known for building the Titanic has been hit by the sudden departure of another senior executive.
Arun Raman has resigned as chief financial officer of Harland & Wolff, a role he had held since 2019, with immediate effect.
His exit comes after a string of high-profile departures from the historic Belfast shipyard in recent months. In August, Malcolm Groat, 63, its chairman, and two non-executive directors resigned. In July John Wood, 49, was sacked as chief executive. The shipbuilder is now led by Russell Downs, 56, a restructuring expert, who is overseeing a strategic review with experts from Rothschild Bank.
Wood’s departure was reported to be a condition of a $25 million loan from Riverstone Credit Partners, an American credit agency that had already provided Harland with a $115 million facility.
The resignation of Raman, 46, marks the latest setback.
The company has continued to come under significant financial pressure after it was sacked last month by the government of the Falklands Islands as a preferred bidder to build a new £120 million floating port. In July, the government rejected a £200 million loan guarantee for the company, saying that there was a “very substantial risk” that taxpayers’ money would be lost on such a guarantee.
There are now mounting concerns over the future of the historic shipbuilder and its 1,500 workforce in the UK. Harland employs staff at four sites in Belfast, Methil, Amish in Scotland and Appledore in north Devon.
Further worries about its finances were raised last month after the shipbuilder warned that it would not be able to finalise its accounts for the 2023 financial year. It said that it had suspended work on the unpublished accounts and was focusing its resources on talks with Rothschild.
A group of shareholders that claim to collectively own nearly 30 per cent of the company expressed worries last month that the process was being run in the interests of the company’s creditors as opposed to those who held equity. The shareholders, organised under the name HARL Shareholders Collective, said reports that the business could be broken up and sold off in parts could jeopardise naval contracts and result in significant financial losses for both shareholders and employees.
Unaudited results show that the company reported revenue of £86.9 million in 2023, up from £27.8 million in 2022, and a pre-tax loss of £43.1 million, an improvement from a £70.8 million pre-tax loss a year earlier.
Trading in Harland’s shares was suspended on July 1 after it failed to publish its audited accounts. Those shares, which were quoted on Aim, London’s junior stock market, had fallen by 34 per cent in the 12 months leading up to its suspension.