New finance bosses unveiled at two of Scotland's biggest listed companies

Two of Scotland’s biggest and most historic listed businesses have new finance bosses after twin high-level appointments.

Aberdeen's Wood said Arvind Balan would be joining its board as chief financial officer from April 15.

Wood, the Aberdeen-headquartered energy and engineering services heavyweight, said Arvind Balan would be joining its board as chief financial officer from April 15 next year. Balan has been chief financial officer of the civil aerospace arm of Rolls-Royce, the FTSE 100 aerospace and defence giant, for the last two years. Prior to this, he held a number of executive financial leadership roles at Shell where he worked for 14 years across the UK, Singapore and China.

Balan’s election as a director will be subject to approval by Wood’s shareholders at its annual general meeting next May. He will succeed David Kemp, whose intention to retire was announced in August.

Wood chief executive Ken Gilmartin said: “Arvind is an experienced and dynamic financial leader with strong capital markets and operational experience in industries and geographies in which Wood excels.”

Founded more than four decades ago from fishing industry roots, Wood’s fortunes have tracked the growth of the North Sea sector and with it a push into related energy and specialist engineering markets, both domestically, and increasingly, overseas. It operates in 60 countries, employing some 35,000 people.

Meanwhile, Weir Group, the Glasgow-headquartered global mining engineer that can trace its roots back to 1871, said Brian Puffer would be taking up the role of chief financial officer and joining its board by April 1, at the latest. Puffer is currently chief financial and risk officer of BP Integrated Supply and Trading. He will succeed John Heasley who, as announced on July 27, will be leaving Weir to take up a new role as finance director of Anglo American.

Weir chair Barbara Jeremiah said: “Brian joins our strong finance team at Weir and will provide leadership as we drive standardisation and simplification across the business. We look forward to welcoming him to the board.”

In a trading update, the group said it had built up a “strong order book and operating momentum” heading into the fourth quarter. It remains on track to hit an operating margin target of 17 per cent.