Babcock International Group (LON:BAB), the aerospace and defence company, announced the appointment of Ruth Cairnie to succeed Mike Turner CBE.
Ruth Cairnie will initially join the Board as a Non-Executive Director today and will assume the role of Chair on Mike Turner’s retirement at the Company’s Annual General Meeting on 18 July 2019 after 11 years in the role.
Ruth Cairnie has extensive experience of the engineering sector, gained from a 37-year international career spanning senior functional and line roles at Royal Dutch Shell plc, including Executive Vice President for Group Strategy & Planning. She is currently the Senior Independent Director of Associated British Foods plc and a Non-Executive Director of Rolls Royce Holdings plc and ContourGlobal plc.
Ruth Cairnie is the Chair of POWERful Women, an initiative to advance gender diversity within the energy sector. She has experience of advising government departments on strategic development and capability building. She is also a trustee of Windsor Leadership and a member of the finance committee of the University of Cambridge, where she studied for her Master of Advanced Studies in Mathematics.
Commenting on the appointment of Ruth Cairnie, Mike Turner CBE said:
“Following a thorough process to identify and select a new Chair, led by our Senior Independent Director, Sir David Omand, we are delighted to welcome Ruth to the Board. She is a strategic thinker and strong leader, and we look forward to her bringing her in-depth experience, gained from a broad range of executive and non-executive roles at leading industrial companies, both in the UK and internationally, to benefit Babcock.”
Ruth Cairnie said:
“I am delighted to be joining the Babcock team and I look forward to working with the Board and the executive team to deliver shareholder value, and to help maximise future opportunities. I am hugely enthusiastic about the opportunity to oversee the next stage of Babcock’s development as a major company delivering complex engineering to support its clients, both in the UK and internationally.”
