BNFL has today refused to confirm weekend speculation in the Financial Mail that Gordon Campbell, chairman of defence services group Babcock International, will be appointed new chairman of BNFL this week. He would take over from current chairman Hugh Collum who announced his resignation from the post in November last year.
If his appointment is confirmed, Campbell, whose chairmanship of Babcock has been on a part-time basis since July 2003, will already have some experience of BNFL having been appointed as a non-executive director of its board in August 2000 shortly after the company’s corporate image had been badly tarnished by the Japanese MOX fuel falsification scandal. Described in subsequent BNFL annual accounts as being a former Chief Executive of Courtaulds and as an ex non executive director with AEA Technology and Argos, the Babcock International website also shows him to be a non-executive director of Wade Allied Holdings Ltd and Jupiter Split Trust plc as well as being a Trustee Director of the British Heart Foundation, Chairman of ITI Scotland and Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Just three months ago, Sellafield workers reacted angrily on discovering that the new chairman’s salary had been set by the Government’s Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) at £165,000 per year. The DTI advertisement for the post was worded “Wanted: New chairman for BNFL, the nuclear clean-up and services business. Will only take one day a week and pays a salary of £165,000 (more may be available for an exceptional candidate). Knowledge of the nuclear industry is not essential “. Workers pointed out that for a five-day week, this fat cat salary would amount to £800,000 per year – at a time when they were being told to tighten budgets and cut costs.
Resigning chairman Hugh Collum took up his post with BNFL in October 1999 on a three year contract at an annual salary of £150,000. Picking up the pieces after the highly damaging MOX scandal, Collum was to take steps ‘to get BNFL back on track and prepare it for the future’ with the particular goal of helping the company to achieve a Public Private Partnership (PPP). One year after his appointment the DTI conceded that BNFL was technically bankrupt and announced the formation of a Liabilities Management Agency (now re-named the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority) to take over the running of Sellafield in 2005. Any plans for a PPP were scrapped last year by the DTI (the company’s sole shareholder) following the company’s posting of pre-tax losses for the year of over £1Bn.
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