Rolls-Royce finance director leaving for top job at FKI

Rolls-Royce suffered a setback yesterday with the announcement that its finance director, Paul Heiden, is leaving the aero-engine maker to join the engineering group FKI as its new chief executive.

Mr Heiden, 45, was viewed internally at Rolls as the heir apparent to the current chief executive, John Rose.

His departure at the end of this year to join FKI means that Rolls will have lost two of its four top executives within the space of a few months. Sir Ralph Robins, the Rolls chairman, is due to retire by next April.

The intention is to replace Sir Ralph with a non-executive chairman hired from outside, rather than elevating Mr Rose to the chairmanship. This means that Mr Heiden would probably have had to wait a long time to get the chief executive's job at Rolls.

A former Hanson executive, Mr Heiden joined Rolls 10 years ago and became finance director three years ago. He has been heavily involved with Rolls' mergers and acquisitions programme, including the plan, now aborted, to put its industrial energy business into a joint venture with ABB. At FKI, he will replace the current chief executive, Bob Beeston, who is retiring next January.

Meanwhile, Rolls denied that its "40-day engine" was behind schedule, saying the intention had always been to complete the programme by 2005. However, internal company documents show that the original target was for Rolls to start producing four engines – the Tay, RB211-535, Trent 700 and Trent 800 – in 40 days by the start of 2003. Current production time is 405 days. When the 40-day engine programme was launched in 2000 it was 700 days.