CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS
Cisco Systems
One of the world’s largest global IT companies has appointed Phil Read as operations director for its finance and professional services business. Read rejoins Cisco after a four-year stint as a sales and marketing director at BT. In his new role, he will be responsible for the sales and engineering teams responsible for the firm’s IT technology platforms. Read’s organisation will advise on key aspects of workforce productivity, efficiency systems and risk and compliance solutions.
Invensys
The technology company has announced that David Thomas, who has been acting chief financial officer of the group since March 2011, has been appointed to the role on a permanent basis. The former Ernst & Young senior partner joined Invensys in 2002.
Volkswagen Group
Europe’s biggest carmaker has appointed Simon Thomas as managing director of Volkswagen Group UK. Thomas previously worked for Nissan UK in sales and marketing in Canada and Europe before being appointed senior vice president for Europe sales and marketing with Nissan in 2009.
Bluefin Wealth Management
The unit of Bluefin Advisory Services appointed Martin Avery to its London-based marketing team. Avery is joining Bluefin with more than a decade of experience in the financial services industry.
Norcros
The home consumer products group has appointed Martin Towers, 58, as an independent non-executive director. Towers is also now chairman of the audit committee. He replaces Jamie Stevenson, who retired from the two positions at yesterday’s annual general meeting. Towers is a non-executive director of RPC Group, KCOM Group and Lupus Capital. He was formerly chief executive of Spice, the utility support services group, and prior to that was group finance director of Kelda Group, group finance director of Spring Ram Corporation and McCarthy and Stone.
QBE
The specialist in business insurance has appointed Patrick Coene as managing director for European markets. Based in Brussels, Coene will join in September and report to Terry Whittaker, managing director for distribution in QBE’s European operations. Coene was previously chief executive officer of Amlin Corporate Insurance. He joined the P&C division of AG 1824 (now AG Insurance) in 1992 where he was latterly head of motor insurance. In 1998 he joined Fortis Corporate Insurance and was subsequently appointed chief executive of Fortis Corporate Insurance (now Amlin Corporate Insurance).