Founder and CEO to leave UK cinema chain in 2014.

UK cinema chain Cineworld Group has announced that founder and CEO Steve Wiener is to leave the business on March 31, 2014. A new CEO will be appointed in due course.

Wiener has spent 44 years in the cinema industry and 18 years leading Cineworld. A statement from the company said: “Steve Wiener has decided that it is time to move on and enjoy the fruits of his success.”

The New York-born exec set up Cine UK in 1995. He had moved to the UK four years earlier with Warner Brothers but quit after raising £17m from backers such as JP Morgan and NM Rothschild.

The Blackstone Group acquired Cine UK nine years later and shortly afterwards it more than doubled in size when the venture capital firm bought the UK assets of French group UGC in a deal worth around £200m. Wiener ran the combined Cineworld Group, which currently operates 78 cinemas in the UK.

Wiener said: “In 1995 my wife Jenny and I wrote a business plan to start a cinema company.  We expected over a five-year period to open five-seven multiplex cinemas and sell it on to one of the big operators.

“Today, in 2013, Cineworld is the number one cinema chain in the UK and has been for more than three years.  This was achieved by a lot of hard work by an executive team that is the best I have ever worked with in my 44 years in the industry.  I am sure with them on board Cineworld will continue to go from strength to strength.”

Cineworld chairman Anthony Bloom added: “I speak on behalf of the Board and everyone in the business when I thank Steve for having the vision to create Cineworld and subsequently building it into the UK’s most popular cinema business. 

“He has led the company with great distinction from the first day of its founding and has mentored and developed an outstanding management team. He will leave the business in fine shape and with significant management depth when he moves on to new challenges at the end of March.

“This is an exciting time for Cineworld as it continues with ambitious UK expansion plans.  We have just opened our newest cinema in Wembley and are making steady progress on the well-developed programme Steve has put in place over the past several years. We look forward to the next chapter of our growth and express our deep appreciation to Steve.”

In December 2012, Cineworld acquired Picturehouse Cinemas, which operates 21 theatres, for $76m (£47.3m).

Last month, the Competition Commission ruled the move could mean higher prices for customers in Aberdeen, Bury St Edmunds and Cambridge, where Cineworld will have to sell cinemas.

Cineworld has decided to sell The Belmont Picturehouse in Aberdeen and Abbeygate Picturehouse in Bury St Edmunds but still has yet to make a decision on whether to sell the Arts Picturehouse in Cambridge or the city’s Cineworld cinema.

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