What next for Harriet Green of Thomas Cook? In an interview with The Telegraph in May this year, Ms Green said she was planning to stick around even longer: "I've always said that I'm going to stay six years. If you don't fix stuff in six years, you should be fired anyway. Just last week she echoed those comments at a conference: "You can't do a transformation on this sort of scale in a year or two years. I usually say it's about six years... We go to the City next week with our second year of results and to show if and how the company has become fitter and better and we're absolutely not done. Her abrupt departure, revealed alongside full-year results, sent the shares tumbling 17.69pc to 113½p, although part of the fall was attributed to a warning in the results that growth in 2015 would be "more measured." "This comes as a significant surprise," Barclays analyst Patrick Coffey said of Ms Green's departure. Neil Dwane, chief investment officer for Europe at Allianz Global Investors, Thomas Cook's 12th biggest shareholder, said: "The management change is a surprise, although Harriet is known for turning things around not sailing the ship forward, so perhaps she felt this was a good time." Thomas Cook's chairman, Frank Meysman, emphasised the decision "was taken unanimously with the full board" and sources pointed to the fact that Green had already lined up her own successor. However Ms Green's absence on Wednesday from media calls and a presentation to City analysts did little to improve the chaotic and hasty appearance of the announcement. Asked if the parting was acrimonious, Mr Meysman said cryptically: "All CEOs are different. One of the arts is to work together with everybody [no matter] how different they are. Being different doesn't mean acrimony. That is the point I wanted to get across. She was totally in line with that decision which was taken unanimously with the full board. Sources close to Ms Green told a different tale. As an energetic turnaround junkie, who gets by on as little as three-and-a-half hours sleep, she had always been hired to do a fixed job, to get Thomas Cook on to a sustainable footing before handing the reins over to someone else with years of experience in the travel industry. Other large corporates in need of a similar, rapid transformation, had come calling, including several retailers. Once her contractual obligations to Thomas Cook are worked through, an announcement on a new post will be forthcoming, one source said. Despite her recent public comments suggesting that she could be at Thomas Cook for another couple of years, Ms Green said in a statement: "I always said that I would move on to another company with fresh challenges once my work was complete. That time is now. I wish all of the team at this re-energised company continued success, as they move to the next phase of the company's development. Both sides were eager to point out that, even if the timing came as a surprise to the outside world, the succession plan was drawn up a year ago. In November 2013, Peter Fankhauser was promoted to chief operating officer for his part in successfully overhauling Thomas Cook's problematic UK business, a new role that effectively meant he was chief executive in waiting. Fankhauser was chosen by Ms Green. The nature of Wednesday's announcement may be more chaotic than Ms Green, who famously cold-called Meysman to tell him "you need me" when he was looking for candidates to take on the challenging Thomas Cook job, may have hoped for. But of at least one fact there is no doubt: under Ms Green's tenure Thomas Cook's share price soared from 14p to more than 130p, raising the company's value from £148m to just shy of £2bn. She may be gone from Thomas Cook, but it is only a matter of time before Ms Green will be back.