McDonald’s fast food restaurant chain’s European President Steve Easterbrook will be resigning from the company and will be joining the position of Chief Executive at Pizza Express.

This will be a setback for McDonalds, as Easterbrook has served his 18 years in the service.

Easterbrook will leave the company in September and will replace the former Chief Executive Mark Angela at Gondola Group’s PizzaExpress restaurant chain.

Doug Goare will take over the position of Mr. Easterbrook at McDonalds in October. He has worked for the company for 33 years and currently was running the supply chain and real estate development at McDonald’s.

He will be replaced by Jose Armario, who leads the company’s Canada and Latin America operations.

McDonald’s Chief Executive, Jim Skinner stated, “We have a deep bench of talent with individuals who are ready to step into these important leadership roles”.

McDonald’s has around 7,000 restaurants in 40 countries across Europe. In the year 2009, the company generated $9.5bn in total revenues, and claimed itself to be the company’s top revenue producer in the world.

Steve West restaurant analyst at Stifel Nicolaus stated that the unexpected resignation of Mr. Easterbook was quite surprising because of his short tenure in the job.