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By Felicity Ussher, 2 August 2000 17:10

NEWS ICL has begun the hunt for a new chief executive with strong ebusiness credentials following the sudden departure of Keith Todd and the collapse of flotation plans. In a shock disclosure, broken on silicon.com earlier today, one of the UK's biggest ebusiness service companies said its financial performance was simply not up to scratch to launch an IPO. The company announced operational losses of £69.7m in its last results. An ICL statement said Todd had tendered his resignation as chief executive, "in the light of close identification with the flotation of ICL". The company and its parent company Fujitsu are actively seeking a replacement. As recently as May, Todd told silicon.com that ICL would be one of the successful flotations on the London Stock Exchange this year. "The reason is that ICL is a company of substance - 21,000 people, £3bn in revenue and a fast growing ebusiness services strategy," he said. But company spokesman, Graham Goulden, said this week that ICL would need a far stronger ebusiness operation before it could consider floating again. "We will be streamlining our operations and launching a major internal cost-efficiency programme," Goulden confirmed. "In particular, we need to address the management structure of various departments, and to streamline some our divisions by selling them off." Clive Longbottom, analyst at Strategy Partners, said: "They don't have an offering. They try to say they're strong in ebusiness, but they're only really strong in government. And everyone knows that's not ebusiness." Goulden admitted there was no masterplan in the offing, but that a "gradual evolution" towards ebusiness would continue. ICL already supplies the back-end systems for Waitrose@Home and for Affinity Internet Services, among others. It recently announced a partnership with Nokia for promoting WAP phones. Todd was ICL's CEO for five years, following eight years as its finance director. A colleague told silicon.com: "I'm sure he'll come up with something surprising to do by the end of the summer."