BTR has bowed to increasing City criticism of its policy of recruiting
its executives internally and yesterday silenced its detractors with the
proposed appointment of RTZ deputy chief executive Ian Strachan as chief
executive to follow Alan Jackson.
Mr Jackson will be 60 in March 1996. Mr Strachan, 51, will become an
executive director in April and will spend three months touring the
conglomerate's global activities and then become managing director in
July before succeeding Mr Jackson in January next year.
He is highly regarded in the City as an approachable and competent
manager and excellent at communication -- something which has been
lacking at BTR in recent years and helped undermine it share price
performance.
It was inevitable that Mr Strachan would leave RTZ in due course as he
was pipped for the post as chief executive of the world's largest mining
company by Robert Wilson in 1991. Mr Wilson is only sx months older and
so there is no scope for his reaching the top position.
It was thought that he would have been a candidate to become chief
executive of Barclays where Courtaulds Textiles' Martin Taylor was
appointed last year.
He joined RTZ as finance director in 1987 and was, paradoxically,
succeeded in that position by Christopher Bull who came from BTR.
Earlier, he had worked his way up through the ranks at Exxon after a
year's teaching political science at Harvard University.
BTR will also have to appoint a new chairman to succeed Norman Ireland
in May next year.
The company said the nomination committee decided that Mr Strachan
should be supported by a UK-based chairman capable of a reasonable
period of tenure -- Mr Ireland will have been chairman for just three
years when he goes.
Also, two additional non-executives will be recruited to maintain the
balance of UK based directors. Mr Jackson, an Australian, is staying on
in a non-executive role.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article