Aberdeen transport company FirstGroup has finally appointed a new boss - several months after its last chief executive left amid pressure from an activist investor.
Graham Sutherland’s career to date includes 12 years at BT where he held several senior positions, including chief executive of the BT business and public sector division.
The Scot was recently chief executive of KCOM Group, a telecommunications company, from 2018 until its sale to a Macquarie-managed infrastructure fund a year later.
Mr Sutherland, 58, takes up his new role in the middle of next month.
David Martin, FirstGroup's executive chairman, told the Times the incoming chief had "a strong track record in the delivery of critical services and in creating value for shareholders in rapidly-evolving regulatory and technological environments".
The company has been without a chief executive since last September, when Matthew Gregory, 52, left after Coast Capital, an American hedge fund that was then the biggest shareholder, criticised his competency and said that he should go.
Mr Gregory's final act was to deliver the £3.3billion sale of most of FirstGroup's US business, including its yellow school buses.
The Times reports that Coast had been agitating for the group to be split up, but it was not impressed by the deal as investors shared only £500million of the proceeds.
Mr Sutherland, who was born raised in Inverness, will become the company's fourth CEO since Sir Moir Lockhead led a buyout of Grampian Transport in 1989 to found the firm.
FirstGroup's current operation include First Bus, the second-largest regional bus operator in the UK. It serves two-thirds of the UK's 15 largest conurbations, including Glasgow, Bristol and Leeds, and has a fifth of the market outside London.
The company also has First Rail, the UK's largest rail operator. It runs four Government-contracted operations - Avanti, GWR, SWR, TPE - and open access operations Hull Trains and Lumo.