Penny Schmith left her post as the executive director of the British Chamber of Commerce in Denmark at the beginning of September, a press release from the organisation confirmed on Monday. The BCCD cited management and staff restructuring as the reason for Schmith’s departure.
Prior to Schmith joining the BCCD in 2006, initially as an administrator, she worked at the British Embassy in Copenhagen for approximately 16 years.
Mariano Davis, the president of the chamber, explained in a newsletter that the BCCD has devised new plans for the organisation’s governing board due to negative annual accounts in 2013.
“This plan has been designed to carry out a financial turnaround from significant loss to balanced 2014 accounts while maintaining and increasing value for the chamber members,” Davis wrote. “We have many plans to meet [our members’] expectations without radically changing what has worked well in the past.”
Schmith will be replaced by Metzenia Mostrup, who will be in charge of the chamber’s daily proceedings, event management and membership development. A Danish national originally educated as a designer, Mostrup founded the UK-based marketing firm MMC London and until recently worked as the vice president of financial services consultancy Ekas & Ekasure Ltd.
Other personnel changes include Davis and Gareth Garvey stepping down from the BCCD board (“in order not to create a governance issue under Danish law”) to take salaried part-time positions as the chamber’s CEO and CFO respectively, while part-time worker Lærke Højmark has left the BCCD.
