Yahoo Finance Former ITV boss Charles Allen becomes chairman of Balfour Beatty
Charles Allen, one of the most prominent CEOs of his generation when he ran ITV, has today been named as the next chairman of infrastructure building giant Balfour Beatty.
He will join the board after the company’s AGM today as a non-executive director before taking over from current chairman Philip Aiken on 20 July.
His previous City roles include chairing ISS and EMI Music and he was chief executive of ITV and the caterer Compass Group as well being chief advisor to the British Home Office.
Regularly appearing in the lists of the country’s most influential gay people, Labour peer Lord Allen of Kensington’s appointment will mark a welcome element of LGBT diversity in the construction industry.
He sits in the House of Lords and currently holds positions as “Advisory Chairman” at the mergers and acquisitions advice boutique, Moelis & Company. He is currently also chairman of Global Media and Entertainment.
Aiken, who has been in post for six years, said: “I am pleased to welcome Charles Allen to Balfour Beatty. He brings to our Board a wealth of experience of international companies, a range of sectors and Government.”
Allen was one of the most prominent corporate CEOs in the 1990s when he worked with the gregarious tycoons Gerry Robinson at Granada and Michael Green at ITV.
He and Robinson met at the Grand Metropolitan conglomerate where they led a management buyout of Compass. He then followed Robinson to ITV, where he was seen to upset some of the creative artists by bringing in a new, money-conscious culture.
John Cleese famously described one of Robinson and Allen as a “jumped up caterer”, but it was never quite clear which one the Fawlty Towers star meant.
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