The shake-up of top management at British Airways (BA) gathered pace yesterday as John Rishton, its chief financial officer, announced that he was leaving to join Netherlands-based Ahold, the world's fourth-largest food retailer, as its chief financial officer.

Mr Rishton's departure, which will be effective at the end of the year, comes days before Willie Walsh is due to take over as chief executive of BA from Sir Rod Eddington.

Mr Rishton has played a leading role in the airline's financial recovery. He joined BA as financial controller in 1994 from Ford.

He has been chief financial officer of the airline since September 2001, taking over just before the terrorist attacks in the US that plunged the airline and aviation sector into crisis.

He is to be replaced by Keith Williams, BA group treasurer and head of taxation.

Mr Williams joined the airline from Reckitt & Colman as head of taxation in 1998.

He has worked closely with Mr Rishton on transforming the overstretched BA balance sheet since 2001, cutting the group's net debt from £6.6 billion (€9.72 billion) at the end of 2001 to less than £3 billion.

Mr Rishton (47) was seen as one of the top internal candidates to replace Sir Rod as chief executive. However, he lost out to the youthful Mr Walsh (43), formerly chief executive of Aer Lingus.

He has been headhunted by Ahold, the Dutch group, which was caught up in a €970 million accounting scandal in early 2003.

Criminal trials arising from the scandal are pending in both the Netherlands and the US.

Mr Rishton was picked from an initial list of more than 25 candidates in a global executive search.

He has been tempted to move to the Netherlands by a big increase in his pay.

In his last year at BA, Mr Rishton earned £466,000, including a basic salary and fees of £340,000 plus performance-related bonuses of £110,000.

At Ahold, Mr Rishton could earn up to €2.03 million a year, including a basic salary of €725,000, an annual bonus component of up to €725,000 and long-term incentives worth €580,000 a year.

He will also receive 100,000 shares in Ahold - which was trading yesterday at €6.37 a share - in compensation for forfeited bonuses and incentives at BA.

Both the top management and the board of BA are changing rapidly as a new generation is appointed to take over from the team that has led the airline through financial crisis to achieve the highest operating profit of any airline last year. - (Financial Times Service)