Appointments: HSBC; UKFast & more

HSBC has appointed Jason Gledhill as area commercial director for Lancashire and Cumbria. Based at the bank’s commercial centres in Preston and Carlisle, he will lead a team of 34 supporting businesses with a turnover between £500,000 and £30m,

Mr Gledhill has been with HSBC for a year and moves to Lancashire from a similar role on the other side of the Pennines, where he covered the Wakefield, Kirklees and Calderdale districts of Yorkshire.

He takes over the Lancashire position from Leigh Briggs, who is moving to a senior position within HSBC.

Mr Gledhill has more than 25 years’ experience in the banking industry in the North of England and prior to joining HSBC was with Barclays in Manchester.

He said: “I also look forward to getting out and meeting both the business and professional services communities, and have been impressed with the quality and breadth of companies I have met so far in the area.”

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MANCHESTER law firm Kuits has made two key appointments with Kevin McKenna and Katie McCann joining to lead its employment and family departments.

Mr McKenna, who joins as a partner from Weightmans, has taken over from Sally Bird to allow her to focus on developing new and existing client relationships.

Katie McCann was previously a solicitor until 2009 when she transferred to the Bar and became a barrister at Atlantic Chambers in Liverpool, specialising in all aspects of family and matrimonial law. Prior to joining Kuits, she had developed a thriving practice in “direct access” work, where the public could instruct her directly as a barrister as opposed to instructing a solicitor first.  Katie joins as in-house counsel and head of family.

Executive partner, Robert Levy said: “We consider it a great coup that we have been able to attract lawyers of Kevin’s and Katie’s calibre to the firm.  Our reputation is built on the expertise, commerciality and personality of our people and our long term growth plan dictates that we attract these people into the firm whenever we can.”

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IRLAM-based Mutech, the electronics design and manufacturing consultancy, has appointed John Smith as business development manager, as it looks to double its sales over the next two years.

Mr Smith has joined Mutech from Infoteam MS, following posts at Plessey, Marconi, AT&S GmbH and LPS Exci.

He said: “The company is in a unique position. With its niche skills, innate abilities and the desire to be a leading centre of excellence, it can and will grow significantly. My ambition is to double Mutech’s turnover within the next 24 months by extending the customer base in UK, mainland Europe, the Americas, Australia and China.”

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UKFast, the cloud and colocation firm  has appointed Mark Walker to lead its drive into the public sector with the introduction of cloud range, FlexPod.
 
Mr Walker joins the team having worked as regional sales manager at both cloud firm ANS and IT firm Proact.

Lawrence Jones, CEO of UKFast, said: “With this appointment we are able to offer the public sector the opportunity to move away from their traditional risky in-house data centres into secure, resilient and modern facilities to experience how the internet should be.”
 
The company said last week it expects 2013 turnover to hit £25m.

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LANCASHIREwallpaper design company Forrest & Jones has appointed Chris Brooks as sales director to lead the development of its new base in Manchester‘s Northern Quarter as part of an on-going expansion programme.

Mr Brooks, the former managing director of wallpaper supplier Murum Es, took up his new role with the Preston-based company last month.