Aston Martin has appointed Penny Hughes, a former Coca-Cola executive, as its chair as the luxury carmaker prepares for a £5bn stock market flotation.
Andy Palmer, the Aston Martin chief executive, said the appointment of Hughes and a string of other boardroom heavyweights was “a significant milestone in our history and of the successful turnaround of the company”, which has been bankrupt seven times.
Aston Martin, which makes sports cars driven by James Bond in many of the 007 films, is planning to float its shares on the London Stock Exchange in October. The eagerly-awaited flotation could see the carmaker enter the FTSE 100 index of Britain’s most valuable companies. If it does make it into the FTSE 100, Hughes will be one of just seven female chairs of companies in the blue-chip index.
Hughes, who has experience on the boards of FTSE 100 firms including Royal Bank of Scotland, Vodafone and WM Morrison, will also chair Aston Martin’s nomination committee. She spent the bulk of her career at Coca-Cola, where she was president of the company’s UK and Ireland operations.
Hughes was the chair of RBS’s remuneration committee when it awarded former RBS boss Stephen Hester a near-£1m bonus following the bank’s government bailout. Hester later renounced the £963,000 payment after succumbing to “enormous political pressure”. Hughes defended the bonus payment, saying it was her “responsibility is to ensure we’ve got talented leadership that feels it is rewarded appropriately for the task they’re doing”.
Aston Martin also appointed former InterContinental Hotels chief executive Richard Solomons, former Sainsbury’s executive Imelda Walsh, Deutsche Bank director Peter Espenhahn, Arab British Chambers of Commerce director Lord Carrington and Tensie Whelan, a professor of business and society at New York University.
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