Veteran Starbucks boss Howard Schultz is stepping down from the company’s board after 40 years with the coffeehouse, with sources saying he realized he has become a ‘distraction’ for the chain.

Schultz, 70, bought the company from co-founders Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker in the early 1980s, a decade after it was launched in Seattle.

But on Wednesday, Starbucks unexpectedly announced that Schultz was stepping down from the board, ending his four-decade rule.

Schultz’s departure is in part due to concerns that his stridently anti-union stance was becoming a ‘distraction’, and the controversy was not helping the brand.