The finance director of Tate & Lyle, John Nicholas, is to leave the commodities giant by "mutual agreement" after losing the confidence of the City following a series of profit warnings last year.

Tim Lodge, head of investor relations, will replace Mr Nicholas on an interim basis, but Tate has hired headhunter Spencer Stuart to find a permanent replacement.

Iain Ferguson, Tate's chief executive, said of the departure: "It was amicable. Both sides reflected that it was not working out as well as we had hoped."

Analysts said Mr Nicholas's exit had not come as a great surprise. "He never recovered from last September's profits warning when the City felt it had been misled on Tate's tax guidance," one analyst said.

Mr Nicholas, who will receive a year's salary of £417,000, joined Tate in June 2006. He will leave at the end of this month.

Mr Lodge is a candidate for the job, having previously worked as group financial controller during his 20 years with the company, Mr Ferguson said.

He added that it was likely to take between three and nine months to find and appoint a new finance director.

The announcement was made in conjunction with a trading statement in which Tate said it expected results for the six months to the end of September to be in line with the same period last year.

However, Mr Ferguson warned of the difficulty of forecasting revenues given the present economic climate.

"The general deterioration in global economic conditions coupled with the increased volatility in commodity prices, energy costs, and exchange rates make any statement about the outlook more than usually difficult," he said.

Tate said it would take an unexpected £25m to £30m hit on higher costs to revamp a corn mill in the US, but said that should be offset by foreign exchange moves in the first half and by-product profits on higher corn prices in the second six months.

Corn prices have fallen from an $8 peak in June to about $5.50 a bushel, but remain a third higher than at this time last year.

Investec analyst Martin Deboo said the forecast of higher by-product revenues contributed to the uncertainty surrounding the company's future results.

Analysts are already waiting for the outcome of annual high-fructose corn syrup price negotiations in the coming weeks.

Mr Ferguson said he was confident those negotiations would be successful after the European corn harvest yield rose 28pc year-on-year.

However, Tate warned that customers of its sucralose sweetener were cutting back on new product launches in the face of a weakening economy.

Tate makes less than 5pc of its revenues from sucralose and Mr Ferguson said that the product remained in the "build-out phase".

Tate's share price closed down 4 at 396p.

Source : Telegraph