New Rover FD takes driving seat.
The newly appointed Rover FD will be under pressure from the start of
John Millet, who has worked at Rover for over 20 years, was appointed by the Phoenix consortium last week and immediately charged with planning a future for the company.
Peter Beale, an investor in Rover who shadowed the FD’s role while the new board was put in place, gave Millet his full backing but confessed he had considered doing the job himself.
‘It’s something we did discuss at an early stage. But I have too many other interests. This is a job John is quite capable of doing. The one thing we are pleased about is we got our first choice for the job.
‘He has been with Rover for 20 years in various financial posts and this is a fairly small step for him.’
Millet will no longer have to deal with the handicap of managing Rover using German accounting standards. It was those standards that many, including insiders at Rover and Phoenix, blame for distorting the real position of the company. Phoenix has maintained that Rover is not losing the #2m a day that BMW claimed. Indeed Beale believes returning the company to the state it was in three years ago will be the secret to future success.