Whitworth confirmed as boss of Peel after Baxter quits

PEEL Ports, which owns the Clyde docks business, has hired a chief executive to replace Stephen Baxter who left the company abruptly in the summer.

Mark Whitworth, who has been acting chief executive since Baxter's departure, takes on the role.

Peel, which has a turnover of 450 million and handles over 67 million tonnes of freight a year, spent the spring stalking Edinburgh-based rival Forth Ports only to have its offer for the company rejected.

Apart from Clydeport, it owns Mersey docks, the Manchester Ship Canal, Medway and Heysham. Whitworth was previously in charge of the group's airports division, which owns Liverpool's John Lennon and Robin Hood in Doncaster.

Whitworth is credited with having turned the airports business into an "attractive investment proposition", with Vancouver Airport Services acquiring a 65 per cent stake in Peel Airports in June.

Baxter was lured to Peel in 2007 from BAA where he had been promoted to chief operating officer only five weeks earlier. He had been head of BAA's Scottish airports for five years.

At Peel he was part of the Northstream consortium that approached Forth with three offers between March and April. The partners consisted of Peel, Deutsche Bank's RREEF infrastructure fund and Arcus, the infrastructure arm spun out from Australian investment firm Babcock & Brown.

But the consortium's advances were rejected by the Forth Ports board, which said the final approach - at 1,400p a share, valuing the group at 643m - was not high enough.