Millennium & Copthorne Hotels plc announced the following additional changes to its board of directors and executive management team. Mr. Waugh, Nicholas George has decided to retire from the board with effect as of May 5, 2017 and accordingly will not stand for re-election at this year's annual general meeting. Mr. George, who serves as the senior independent director and as a member of the audit, risk, remuneration and nominations committees, has been an independent non-executive director of the company since June 2009.

In connection with the retirements of Mr. Waugh and Mr. George, Howard Wu has been appointed as an independent non-executive director with effect from February 17, 2017. Mr. Wu brings broad information technology, data security and e-commerce experience to the board, having held senior positions with technology companies in North America and Europe. He presently serves as the vice president, head of software defined infrastructure at Ericsson and technology advisor to the office of the Mayor of Taipei, Taiwan. Whilst the search for a permanent group chief executive officer continues, after consideration by the nominations committee and board, Mr. Tan Kian Seng, who joined the group as group chief of staff and interim president of Asia in October 2016, will assume the position of interim group chief executive officer of the company on March 1, 2017 following Aloysius Lee's retirement at the end of February. Mr. Lee has been transitioning his responsibilities to Mr. Tan over the past several weeks and will continue to do so as necessary to ensure a smooth handover process. Mr. Tan is based in Singapore and has not been appointed as a director at this time, although it is expected that he will spend significant time in London and attend company board meetings on a regular basis. Prior to working for the group, Mr. Tan had over 30 years of senior executive experience in operations and managing finance, legal, investor relations, purchasing, business development, human resources, information technology and other functions. Most recently he served as advisor to the CEO and Chairman of Venture Corporation Limited.

Given Mr. Wu's experience, he has been appointed to the risk committee effective as of February 17, 2017.