IMI CEO succession

IMI is a global engineering group focused on the precise control and movement of fluids in critical applications and comprises five platform businesses - Severe Service, Fluid Power, Indoor Climate, Beverage Dispense & Merchandising. I have a holding in my income portfolio (epic code: IMI)

IMI announced today the planned retirement at the end of the year of Martin Lamb as CEO, a position he has held for almost 13 years, having been with the company for almost 30 years.  This came as a bit of a surprise to me, at 53 I assumed he would continue for a few more years yet.

He is to be replaced by Mark Selway, who in his previous job was CEO of Boral Ltd an Australian building & construction materials company with sales of AUS$5bn and EBIT of AUS$200m.  He was terminated without cause from his position there in September 2012.  An article in Australia's Business Review Weekly added some more colour to the situation:

"...This year, building products group Boral became a talking point when its board fired CEO Mark Selway.  At the time, in May, the company released a bland statement, saying it required a CEO “with a leadership style suited to harmonising the changes that have occurred over the past two years”.  However, the business community was awash with talk about Selway’s abrasive manner.
A competitor told The Australian Financial Review about an exodus of senior Boral staff: “We have interviewed a number of people from Boral and everyone has the same tale: Selway’s style is very hard to live with and they want out of there”..."

Prior to that he was 8 years with the Weir Group as CEO and before that a Divisional MD at Britax.  As recently as May 2013 he was on the short-list for the CEO position at Sims Metal Management Ltd an Australian scrap metal recycler.

Martin Lamb's record at IMI is quite exceptional and the expectation is that Selway can continue his legacy.  Boral may well have been a company in need of substantial change and a hard abrasive style might have been the approach required - IMI is a very different situation and I hope that Selway has the skills to recognise that and, adapt his style accordingly.