Snc-lavalin shakes up management
Executive from rival firm picked to run new unit
Troubled engineering firm SNC-Lavalin has named an outsider to head its newest and most important global business unit as part of a broader management shakeup.
Neil Bruce, who was chief operating officer at rival AMEC, a British engineering firm, until last October, will head up SNC’s new resources and environment business unit, the company announced Friday.
Patrick Lamarre, who was executive vice-president of the global power division, resigned effective immediately. He will remain available to the company until June 1, the company said.
“These changes represent part of our ongoing effort to further strengthen the company’s management structure and extend its scope,” Robert Card, president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. More changes are to come, he said. Card, who was previously a senior executive with U.S.-based engineering firm CH2M Hill, became chief executive at SNC in October as the Montreal-based company struggles with a series of financial scandals.
Bruce, who will be based in London, will head a diverse unit with responsibility for SNC’s activities in nearly 100 countries, the company said.
The unit will be responsible for the company’s global business in hydrocarbons and chemicals, min- ing and metallurgy, environment and water.
The pedigree of the company’s top two executives should make investors “increasingly more comfortable with the turnaround/strengthening potential of the company’s engineering and construction business,” Maxim Sytchev, a managing director at AltaCorp Capital, wrote in a report.
By shifting more of the business to London, “Bob Card is making hiring reorganization decisions to properly align SNC-Lavalin structure with the reality of a new world — engineering is a global business and the company’s divisions have to be aligned likewise,” Sytchev also wrote.
The changes come more than a month after SNC-Lavalin suspended payments to former chief executive Pierre Duhaime. Duhaime received a $5-million payout after stepping down last March amid an internal accounting investigation. Additional payments were planned over the next two years, including $1.9 million in salary continuance and benefits and $1.7 million in incentives. He was arrested in December in connection with alleged fraud involving one of Montreal’s new “super-hospitals.” The arrest warrant alleged Duhaime and Riadh Ben Aissa, another former top executive, conspired to commit fraud and falsified documents in connection with a contract pertaining to the multibilliondollar McGill University Health Centre. SNC also announced other management and organizational changes Friday, including:
The creation of a global operations group headed by Christian Jacqui, formerly executive vicepresident, Europe. Jacqui will be based in London.
Michael Novak will assume new responsibilities as executive vicepresident for global government, aboriginal and economic affairs, based in Montreal. The company moved to reassure its Montreal-based investors that even though key segments of its business are moving to London, it will remain headquartered in Montreal. Four of the 13 members of the office of the president are francophone Quebecers, including chief financial officer Gilles Laramee, who will head a new business unit overseeing infrastructure, concessions and investments. With files from Star wire services