Kier opting for long-server as its new chief

So the missus is not getting the top job at Kier.

The construction group today revealed that when chief executive John Dodds retires at the age of 65 next year, Deena Mattar, the group's 44-year-old finance director, and partner of Dodds after he left his wife for her two years ago, will not be succeeding him.

Instead the chief executive's job is to go to Paul Sheffield, who has spent more than half of his 48 years with Kier, having joined the group as a graduate civil engineer in 1983.

Dodds was part of the original Kier buyout team from Hanson in 1992, was on the board when it floated four years later and has been chief executive since 2003.

As he departs, the firm is under something of a cloud having received the biggest fine, £18 million, in the recent builders' price-fixing scandal exposed by the Office of Fair Trading.