Four Seasons CEO Kathleen Taylor abruptly leaves luxury hotel group after three years

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts said Kathleen Taylor, who replaced founder Isadore Sharp as chief executive officer in 2010, is leaving the luxury hotelier.

The company’s nine-member executive leadership team will assume management until a successor is found, Toronto-based Four Seasons said in a statement today. The hotelier hired executive- search firm Ferguson Partners Ltd. to look for Taylor’s replacement. Four Seasons didn’t say why Taylor is leaving the company.

Taylor joined Four Seasons in 1989 and was president and chief operating officer before being appointed CEO. Kingdom Hotels International, together with Cascade Investment LLC, a company owned by Bill Gates, and Triples Holdings Ltd., owned by Sharp, took Four Seasons private in 2007. Sharp continues to serve as the company’s chairman.

“We are confident that we can quickly identify a successor to Katie who shares the Four Seasons vision and values,” Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, chairman of Kingdom Hotels, said in the statement.

Sharp started Four Seasons as a motor inn in Toronto in 1961. The company now has 90 properties in 37 countries and more than 50 projects under development.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nadja Brandt in Los Angeles at nbrandt@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kara Wetzel at kwetzel@bloomberg.net.