The London Stock Exchange confirmed this afternoon that it had appointed its first woman chief executive, banker Clara Furse, and reshuffled its board to beef up for the most testing times in its 200-year history.
Furse succeeds Gavin Casey, who quit last September after the LSE's proposed merger with the Deutsche Boerse in Frankfurt collapsed following Swedish bourse operator OM Gruppen's hostile bid for London.
Quitting the board, as from 31 March this year, are IMI chief executive Graham Allen, Bank of England executive director Ian Plenderleith, Goldman Sachs' managing director Simon Robertson, Credit Suisse First Boston's Hector Sants and broker Wise Speke's chairman Nigel Sherlock. Sants was tipped for the top LSE job until the news of Furse's appointment was leaked yesterday.
Joining the board with effect from 1 February are four new non-executive directors, HSBC advisory director Janet Cohen, Hidroelectrica del Cantabrico chairman Oscar Fanjul, former Reed chairman Nigel Stapleton and British Airways legal chief Robert Webb.
The debacle over the failed merger left the exchange bruised, without a strategy, and facing angry shareholders. Furse and the new-look LSE board face the tough task of regaining shareholder confidence, reconciling conflicting interests within the bourse, and forging a strategy amid intense pressures to consolidate exchanges in Europe.
Deutsche Boerse and Euronext, the merger of exchanges in Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, are both going public in the first half of this year to raise money for expansions and acquisitions.
