Aberdeen, United Kingdom - December 9, 2013, Aberdeen, United Kingdom - FirstGroup plc, a transport group, announces that John McFarlane will join the board and will take the post of the chairman, effective January 1, 2014.
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Mr. McFarlane assumed the chairmanship of Aviva plc in July 2012, having joined the board as chairman designate in September 2011. He has spent more than 38 years in the international financial institutions sector and has more than 20 years of public company board experience as chairman, CEO, executive director and non-executive director. He began his career at the Ford Motor Company in manufacturing.
In October 2008 Mr. McFarlane joined the board of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc as a non-executive director having retired from ANZ in September 2007 after ten years as chief executive officer.
Before joining ANZ, he was a group executive director at Standard Chartered plc, responsible initially for Group Strategy, later for North East Asia based in Hong Kong, and subsequently for South Asia, Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas.
Prior to this, Mr. McFarlane was head of Citicorp Investment Bank Ltd, and Citibank in the UK and Ireland. John is currently a non-executive director of Westfield Holdings Limited, and of Old Oak Holdings Limited.
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, Mr. McFarlane 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, Mr. McFarlane 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, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Mr. McFarlane succeed Martin Gilbert who will retire. ■