Norcros adds new faces to its board

NORCROS, the building materials, print and packaging group, has joined the growing if select group of companies to appoint a non-accountant as group finance director, writes Terence Wilkinson.

Gavin Morris, the former chief executive of United Precision Industries, will join the Norcros board on 2 August. He will succeed Robert Alcock who, after four years as finance director, took on the job of group managing director in April.

At the same time Norcros, whose brand names include Triton showers and Crosby doors, has recruited David Arculus, group managing director of Emap, the magazine and newspaper publisher, to join the board as a non-executive director next month.

Michael Doherty, the group chief executive who will take over as executive chairman on 12 July, said he and Mr Alcock were chartered accountants. The board felt that a finance director with a broad commercial outlook would give a better balance.

'With the development of technology the traditional role of an accountant is nowadays done to a large extent by computers. Gavin will provide valuable commercial input while David Arculus will bring us his experience of a different industry where if you don't sell a product today you don't sell it at all.'

Mr Morris, a psychology graduate with an MBA from the University of Chicago, worked for Bain & Co, the management consultants, before helping to lead the pounds 70m managment buy-in in 1988 of RHP Bearings, now called United Precision Industries. The business was subsequently restructured and sold to Nippon Seiko for pounds 206m in 1990.