EUROSTAR chairman Richard Brown has announced that he will be stepping down at the end of June.

His successor will be Clare Hollingsworth, who has been an independent non-executive director on the Eurostar board since 2010. She is also on the boards of Savills, the real estate adviser, Virgin Healthcare, Molnlycke AB and Spire Healthcare. Earlier in her career she was managing director of Caledonian Airways.

Richard Brown, who has had a long railway career, has been with Eurostar since 2002, when he was appointed chief executive. During his term of office Eurostar moved seamlessly from London Waterloo to St Pancras International when HS1 was completed in November 2007.

He became chairman in April 2010, when he was succeeded by the present chief executive Nicolas Petrovic. He also recently advised the Department for Transport on its future franchising programme and is now the chairman of its Franchise Advisory Panel.

Richard Brown said: “It has been a great privilege to be at the heart of Eurostar’s growth and expansion over the last decade but the time is right for me to hand over the reins. Eurostar is now an internationally respected brand and I have every confidence that it will go from strength to strength in the future. With her knowledge of the company and her experience of consumer-facing businesses, Clare is perfectly placed to lead the Board through the next phase of Eurostar’s development.”

Eurostar is poised to expand considerably over the next three years, and is also likely to face competition on the international line to London.

The company has ten new 320km/h trains on order from Siemens, and although there have been some delays in connection with international operating rules, Eurostar is still hoping to start running these trains in 2015. The company is also set to serve more destinations, taking its services beyond their original territory of Britain, France and Belgium.