Aberdeen, Scotland - December 9, 2013, Aberdeen, Scotland - FirstGroup plc, a transport operator, announces that John McFarlane will join the board with immediate effect, and succeed Martin Gilbert as chairman, effective January 1, 2014.
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Mr. McFarlane is chairman of Aviva plc, an insurance group, having joined the board in September 2011, during which period he spent eight months in an executive capacity pending the appointment of a new CEO. He is also non-executive director of Westfield Holdings Ltd, a retail mall operator headquartered in Sydney, and of Old Oak Holdings Ltd, a London-based privately-owned financial holding company.
Mr. McFarlane spent more than 38 years in the international financial institutions sector, including ten years as CEO of Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited.
Prior to that, he was an executive director at Standard Chartered, and head of Citibank in the UK. His early career was with Ford in Dagenham in manufacturing. More recently, in October 2008, he joined the board of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group as a non-executive director to assist in its recovery post the global financial crisis.
Mr. McFarlane has served as president of the International Monetary Conference (the annual meeting of the heads of the world’s major banks and central banks), was chairman of the Australian Bankers' Association, and a director of the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Graduate School of Management, the Financial Regulatory Review Board, the Foreign Affairs Council, and the governing body of the Economics Research Institute for the Association of South East Asian Nations and East Asia.
In the UK, he was a member of the Auditing Practices Board, the London Stock Exchange Council, the Securities Association (UK securities regulator), and the Bank of England Financial Law Review Panel. In 1992, he chaired The McFarlane Report - the review of "The Future Development of Auditing in the United Kingdom and Ireland."
He was educated at Dumfries Academy, the University of Edinburgh, Cranfield School of Management, and the London Business School. Cranfield later awarded him its inaugural Distinguished Alumnus Award as well as an honorary doctorate. He has banking and securities fellowships in the UK, Australia and Hong Kong.
Martin Gilbert, a chairman, will retire from the board, effective January 1, 2014. ■