Weir Group has kicked off a search for its next legal chief as its incumbent general counsel (GC) and company secretary, Keith Ruddock, will retire from the engineering firm at the end of the year.
Ruddock joined the London-listed company in 2012 from Royal Dutch Shell where he spent 20 years in multiple managerial in-house roles including two years as global general counsel for oil products and renewables in London, followed by a three-year stint as general counsel in the upstream international division, Shell’s largest business unit, in The Hague.
The Glasgow-headquartered pump maker, which posted revenues of £2.4bn in 2014, says a recruitment process for the role is already underway and a separate announcement will be made ‘in due course’.
The future appointee will join the business as it faces ongoing turbulence due to falling oil and gas activity. Earlier this month Weir was demoted from Britain’s benchmark index, after shares halved in value this year.
Other high profile in-house moves of late include infrastructure group Balfour Beatty’s GC Chris Vaughan stepping down from the top legal role this summer, with David Mercer, the company’s GC for UK construction and services, taking the mantle. This month Vaughan was appointed GC at multinational hotel, coffee shop and restaurant company, Whitbread.
sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk
