Defence manufacturer Avon Protection has appointed a former head of transaction services at accountancy giant KPMG as an independent non-executive director.
Maggie Brereton, pictured, will join the board of the Melksham-based group, which specialises in protective gear, masks and breathing equipment for the military and first-responder markets, on 1 April.
Maggie is CEO of EOS, a London-headquartered specialist provider of deal advisory services, which she co-founded five years ago after leaving KPMG.
She he has more than 20 years’ experience working on transactions for private equity and corporates on both sell-side and buy-side.
While at KPMG she chaired its audit committee and sat on its risk and remuneration committees. She also led the bid services team, which focused on PLC takeovers and defence.
Avon Protection said she also brought significant experience of the industrial sector, including aerospace and defence, having worked with clients such as GKN, Smiths Group and BAE Systems as well as UPS, BT, Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Prudential.
She will become a member of Avon Protection’s audit, remuneration and nomination committees from 1 April.
At the same time non-executive director Chloe Ponsonby will stand down from the board. Long-standing non-executive director Victor Chavez will replace Chloe as chair of Avon Protection’s remuneration committee, while fellow non-executive director Bindi Foyle, who joins the firm’s board in 2020, will replace Chloe as senior independent director alongside her role as audit committee chair.
Avon Protection chair Bruce Thompson said: “Maggie brings extensive and valuable experience in identifying value creation opportunities, with a deep focus on the numbers and a real specialisation on analysis and the development of change programmes.
“This appointment significantly strengthens the board's experience of implementing and valuing operational and strategic change at a time when these are important elements of the new strategy being taken forward by the leadership team.”
The boardroom changes follow a raft of lucrative new orders at Avon, which had spent much of last year recovering from a tough period during which its shares lost around 70% of their value as it struggled to overcome damaging delays in military orders from the US.
Most recently the firm secured its third delivery order worth $36m (£28.2m) from the US Army under the Next Generation Integrated Head Protection System (NG IHPS) helmet contract, which was previously awarded in 2021.
