Spencer Group appoints new chief exec
ENGINEERING specialist, the Spencer Group, has announced the appointment of Frank Millar as the company’s new group chief executive.
Millar is currently a senior executive with FTSE-listed engineering solutions provider Costain. The Hull-based group’s founder and current CEO, Charlie Spencer, will become chairman.
Millar is operations director of Costain’s Natural Resources division, which has a turnover of £397m within the £960m Costain Group. Prior to joining Costain, he spent ten years with AMEC, a FTSE 100 company and one of the world’s leading engineering, project management and consultancy groups. He is also president and a member of the management board of the Engineering and Construction Industry Association (ECIA), the principal trade and employer group for the engineering construction industry in the UK.
Charlie Spencer said: “Frank’s vast experience, particularly in the oil and gas industry, will be extremely useful to Spencer Group going forward.
“Process engineering is a capability we want to build upon within the business and there are very significant construction and engineering opportunities, particularly within the oil and gas sector, that we wish to explore.
“Frank comes to us with exceptional credentials from his work with two highly-respected, Stock Market-quoted engineering groups. That experience will be invaluable to take Spencer Group further forward from what is already a sizeable business.
“I am moving up to chairman because I recognise that the business needs a CEO with Frank’s experience to take it forward. As chairman I will still be actively involved in the business and in its strategic direction, but I will be handing over the day-to-day running of Spencer Group to Frank and a very experienced existing management team and supporting them fully in developing the business.”
The Spencer Group employs more than 500 people. Turnover climbed up £16.2m (20.6%) to £94.7m for the year to the end of March 2013 and pre-tax profits came in at £1.1m compared to £31,000 for the previous year.
Millar said: “I was looking for a new business leadership challenge and Spencer Group clearly offers that. It’s an exciting business with a strong presence and excellent reputation in the markets it currently operates in.
“It has a very clear preference towards innovation and developing new ideas and that’s very attractive, appealing and challenging.
“My ambition for the business it is to lead it into new markets, taking the company’s high-level engineering capability and growing into more sectors than the business is currently represented within.”
