The suits

Clear career paths are obviously not Lawrence Ziman's stock-in- trade. Having studied at the universities of Cambridge and Michigan, he was a founding partner of the City firm Berwin Leighton in 1966 and three years later began a two-year secondment to the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation.

Now, aged 56, he is returning to industry - in the newly created position of general counsel to the specialised engineering group TI. When he takes over on 1 September, he will assume overall responsibility for the "legal integrity of the company and for the policy and direction of all legal and secretarial activities". In this role he will report to Brian Walsh, finance director and vice-chairman, and will be a member of chairman Sir Christopher Lewington's policy committee.

Since his last sojourn in industry, Mr Ziman has established his own practice, advising - appropriately enough, it turns out - engineering and manufacturing companies on contracts, before merging it into the prominent West End firm Nabarro Nathanson.

Once there, his work ranged wide and culminated in his becoming head of the banking and project finance department. He also found time to serve as one of the two Department of Trade and Industry inspectors investigating the collapse of the Barlow Clowes financial services company in the late Eighties.

ROGER TRAPP