Marshall's rough ride at Invensys

13 April 2012

ENGINEER Invensys sees no imminent business recovery, but chief executive Rick Haythornthwaite predicts its huge disposal programme will raise 'substantially' more than the £1.8bn expected.

His comments followed an unruly annual general meeting where outgoing chairman Lord Marshall was given a rough ride. As shareholder anger threatened to boil over, the normally urbane Marshall, 69, bellowed: 'Turn off that man's microphone.'

The £250,000-a-year parttime chairman was accused of a 'disastrous, but personally enriching' five-year reign. Derision greeted his claim that the acquisition of Dutch software company Baan, which Invensys recently sold for a heavy loss, had merely been 'ahead of its time'.

Marshall said his company car was 'a second-hand BMW'. 'I might suggest a Toyota Corolla,' was the response from the floor. Some 12% of investors withheld support for directors' pay.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in