Peter Lawwell is staying on at Celtic as a director.
In January the club announced that their long running CEO was retiring but it seems that retirement only applied to the job that provided him with £3.5m for the year ending 30 June 2019.
Lawwell is apparently staying on at Celtic to maintain a position he holds in the European Club Association which liaises with UEFA over the Champions League and Europa League.
The benefits to Celtic of his continuing role are unclear, if 2012 the Scottish champions had two qualifying rounds to negotiate to reach the group stage, in recent seasons the qualification route has involved four rounds played over eight consecutive midweeks.
Despite a seeded route Lawwell failed in seven of the last nine seasons to get Celtic into the lucrative group stages with defeats from Malmo, Maribor, AEK Athens, Cluj and Ferencvaros costing the club on average around £25m in turnover.
Two weeks after his official retirement date The Times reports:
Peter Lawwell stood down as Celtic chief executive, and from four other Celtic-related companies, on June 30 but he is still a fully-fledged director of the football club, The Times can reveal.
Documents lodged at Companies House in Edinburgh yesterday confirmed he is on a non-PLC board which also comprises his successor Dominic McKay, as well as Eric Riley, Michael Nicholson and Michael McDonald.
It is understood Lawwell requires a formal connection to the club in order to maintain his position on the board of the European Club Association (ECA).
He has served as an executive board member of ECA since March 2014; has been a member of the Uefa Club Competitions Committee since 2015 and was elected as one of ECA’s four representatives on Uefa’s Professional Football Strategy Council.
With his continuing role at the club Lawwell will be expected to attend AGM’s which will allow shareholders to question some of the decisions taken over his 17 year tenure as CEO.
