City Briefs: Yorkshire Building Society, ITM Power, WANdisco

Yorkshire Building Society

John Heaps is to step down as chair of Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) after nine years at the helm. He will be succeeded by Annemarie Durbin, who will joing the board as chair diesignate by the end of the year.

Durbin is currently chair at Cater Allen Private Bank and a non-executive director and chair of remuneration committee on the boards of Santander UK, Persimmon and Petershill Partners.

She is a lawyer with more than  30 years’ experience in retail, commercial, corporate and institutional banking, and expertise across across general management, operations, HR, legal and compliance, as well as being an executive coach and mentor.

Durbin will relinquish her roles at Santander and Cater Allen to take up her role with YBS during her handover period with John Heaps. Her appointment is subject to regulatory approval.

Susan Allen, chief executive at Yorkshire Building Society, said: “I’m delighted to welcome Annemarie to lead our board.  Her expertise in the financial services sector and beyond will be invaluable to ensuring we continue to build on our strong heritage with the future in mind. I, and the rest of the board are very much looking forward to working with her.”

Commenting on her appointment, Annemarie said: “It’s a privilege to join the Board of such an established and purposeful organisation. As the organisation continues to grow, the mutual values Yorkshire Building Society holds so dear will remain central as we evolve in the best interests of our members.”

John Heaps said: “I am delighted that Annemarie has agreed to join the Society and I look forward to welcoming her to the Board. Annemarie joins a resilient organisation with a strong sense of purpose that has been a privilege to serve.”

ITM Power

ITM Power Germany GmbH will officially open its doors in Linden, north of Frankfurt, in October this year. For ITM, this expansion further strengthens our position as a leading manufacturer of large-scale electrolysers for active projects in Germany and wider Europe today, as well as for future projects which are now in bidding stage.

The new facilities will have office space for more than 50 employees, and a warehouse with special equipment for storing state-of-the-art stacks in lightweight skids ready for quick deployment as aftersales spares.

Rapidly growing amount of real-world performance data will enable ITM to drive advancements in technology and product improvements, development of new business models around remote monitoring/operations and predictive maintenance. These activities will be led by our new global Data and Industrial IoT team which will be based in Linden.

ITM Power Germany will also be home of ITM’s global business development function, of various engineering disciplines, aftersales technicians, field engineers, procurement and other functions.

Dennis Schulz, CEO, said: “This expansion in Germany will not only support responsive aftersales in the heart of the EU as our core market today, but will also be home for various business functions that are enablers for ITM’s accelerated growth. As we are scaling our operations, this is a major step in gearing up for an increasing degree of local content creation in the EU.”

WANdisco

Data activation platform WANdisco confirmed Tesco’s renewal of its software support and maintenance contract with WANdisco.

The renewal runs for a two-year period and is valued at $200,000, covering support and maintenance associated with its usage of WANdisco’s Live Data Plane product. Sheffield-based WANDisco expects to recognise revenue from this renewal from Q3 2023.