FORMER Scottish Power executive Charles Berry has been unveiled as the next chairman of Scottish Gas parent group Centrica, on an annual fee of £445,000.
Mr Berry, who is also chairman of Glasgow-based engineering company Weir Group, was appointed following a recruitment process led by Centrica senior independent director and former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester.
Centrica said Mr Berry joined its board yesterday as a non-executive director and would become chairman on February 21.
He succeeds Rick Haythornthwaite, who announced in May that he intended to step down during the course of the following 12 months after about six years in the role. Mr Berry has previously held chairman roles at engineer Senior, electricity generator Drax Group, and telecoms company Thus Group.
Centrica noted that, in previous executive roles at Scottish Power, Mr Berry had been responsible for power generation, commodity trading, energy retailing and renewable energy in the UK together with having board responsibility for energy regulation.
Mr Berry said: “It is a privilege to join the board of Centrica and follow Rick as chairman. I have admired Centrica for many years and now look forward to working with the board and executive team.”
Mr Haythornthwaite said: “I am delighted to welcome Charles to Centrica as my successor as chairman.
“Charles’s breadth of international energy and engineering knowledge, and a long track record of successful leadership of businesses across industrial, minerals, and retail sectors over the last 20 years, stand him in an excellent position to succeed me and lead the Centrica board. Charles also has extensive experience in both the UK and US of the regulatory framework of the energy and service markets.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here