Woodward departs STV with eye on C4

Boss of Scottish broadcaster is ready for a new challenge after 10 years in post

ROB WOODWARD has refused to rule himself out of the running to become the next boss of Channel 4 as he prepares to step down as the chief executive of STV.

The Scottish broadcaster announced yesterday that Mr Woodward will leave after 10 years at the helm within the next 12 months, with STV confirming that its search for his successor is under way.

Speaking after the company’s annual meeting in Glasgow, Mr Woodward, who is 57, said he was “ready for new challenges” after leading STV for a decade, declaring that he leaves the broadcaster in “very strong health with great future prospects ahead.”

He said: “It feels like it is time for me to find new challenges and let somebody else write the next chapter of STV’s history.”

Channel 4 is on the hunt for a new boss after it confirmed last month that David Abraham would be leaving the job next year.

Asked if he was interested in that role, Mr Woodward said: “Who knows? I’ve got a huge amount of admiration for Channel 4.

“I think it offers a great service and I spent a number of years on the board of Channel 4 as the commercial director in fact before I came to STV. There’s a big job for the right person.”

When asked to comment on the type of role which would attract him in future, Mr Woodward noted: “I’m still considering [my future].

“I always like positions that challenge me, that test my skills to the full and all my 10 years of experience at STV has been [an] amazingly valuable learning experience, and I want to use that expertise to [tackle] fresh challenges.”

While Mr Woodward said he has many highlights to look back on from his time at STV, he emphasised that the “overall strength of the company now speaks for itself.”

He observed: “When I joined the company was in an extremely weak position. It had an over-stretched balance sheet, we had debt we were unable to service and we were paying no dividend.

“Now that position is transformed. We have got a very strong balance sheet, we are paying a very progressive dividend yielding over four per cent for our shareholders, and I think importantly STV and its brand has been put right at the heart of Scottish society, which is what we set out to do.”

Mr Woodward’s departure was announced just two days after the broadcaster launched new STV2, a new commercial channel claimed to be the first offering a “distinct schedule for Scotland”.

The channel, whose flagship programme STV News Tonight covers Scottish, UK and international news, effectively combines and rebrands is existing channels for Glasgow and Edinburgh, alongside new licences for Aberdeen, Ayr and Dundee.

Asked whether it was satisfying to launch a channel with interest in politics at fever pitch, Mr Woodward said: “Well timing is everything.

“We launched last night, STV2, and a key part of our schedule is Scotland’s first integrated international, UK-wide and Scottish news bulletin.

“It is going to enable us to tell stories that have never been told in this way before.”

Earlier, STV’s annual meeting had passed smoothly, with all resolutions carried. However concern was expressed by one investor over Mr Woodward’s bonus.

The shareholder said he has no doubt Mr Woodward does an “excellent job” but suggested it would be more equitable if his £400,000 bonus was distributed among employees to “recognise the contribution everyone makes” to STV’s performance.

Mr Woodward’s bonus, which supplemented a basic salary of £395,000 last year, was defended by non-executive Anne Marie Cannon, chairman of the remuneration committee.

Ms Cannon said Mr Woodward had done an “excellent job” and that his pay had been benchmarked against peers in the industry.

She noted that shareholders would be given the chance to comment on remuneration when the company undertakes a triennial review next year.

Chairman Baroness Ford of Cunninghame said the issue of executive pay is uppermost in shareholders’ minds, saying “we take the business of executive remuneration very seriously, because it is shareholders’ money”. The Baroness NORTH Sea oil services giant Amec Foster Wheeler has posted a 135 per cent increase in annual losses highlighting the challenges faced by the company which Aberdeen’s Wood Group is set to buy for £2.2 billion.

London-based Amec Foster Wheeler lost £542m before tax in the year to December amid tough times in its core oil and gas markets, against £235m in the preceding year.

The company noted clients in the USA delayed or cancelled a number of contracts in response to the fall in oil and gas prices.

The company said activity increased in the North Sea but this reflected the fact some big projects are nearing completion.

Chief executive Jon Lewis warned: “We continue to expect another year of decline in oil and gas activity in 2017.”

Sector watchers have noted that pressure on workloads could increase in the North Sea in coming months as big developments which were commissioned during the boom that ended in 2014 are finished.

The increase in losses at Amec Foster Wheeler was partly driven by a £200m charge to reflect a cut in the valuation of the Foster Wheeler business that Amec acquired for £2bn in 2014.

The group said it recorded the impairment charge because of uncertainty about future prospects for the US oil and gas business run out of Houston, following a significant deterioration in trading conditions in the first half.

The statement may raise questions about Wood’s decision to make its £2.2bn all-share bid for AFW in March. This has

been recommended AFW’s directors.

When the bid was announced Wood Group chief executive Robin Watson said the takeover would create a global project engineering and technical services player with big positions in attractive markets.

Chief financial officer David Kemp said there had been a window of opportunity to move on AFW in the first quarter because the heavily-indebted firm had been planning to complete a £500 million rights issue and had suspended dividend payments to help strengthen its balance sheet.

Wood also highlighted the opportunity to achieve significant cost savings and said this would involve cutting jobs at the enlarged group, without saying where.

Concern among trades unions about the possible impact on jobs in Scotland increased earlier this month when Wood revised up its estimate of likely cost savings by £40m to £150m per year.

The company said then that 30 per cent of the synergies would result from administrative efficiencies, including consolidation of overlapping office locations and the elimination of duplication from central functions.

Wood has shed thousands of North Sea jobs since 2014. Amec axed hundreds of posts that year.

The latest figures disclosed by the firms show Wood employed around 7,200 in the UK last month. AWF had 4,500 workers in the North Sea in March last year.

The proposed takeover requires approval from both sets of shareholders.

Mr Lewis said AFW benefited last year from having a broad range of operations. Cost cutting and the fall in the value of the pound after the Brexit vote also helped. by