Aston Martin names first female chair as it prepares for £5bn float

Aston Martin has appointed Penny Hughes, a former Coca-Cola executive, as its chair as the luxury carmaker prepares for a £5bn stock market flotation.

Andy Palmer, the Aston Martin chief executive, said the appointment of Hughes and a string of other boardroom heavyweights was “a significant milestone in our history and of the successful turnaround of the company”, which has been bankrupt seven times.

Aston Martin, which makes sports cars driven by James Bond in many of the 007 films, is planning to float its shares on the London Stock Exchange in October. The eagerly awaited flotation could result in the carmaker entering the FTSE 100 index of Britain’s most valuable companies. If it does make it into the FTSE 100, Hughes will be one of only seven female chairs of companies in the blue-chip index.

Hughes, who has experience on the boards of FTSE 100 firms including Royal Bank of Scotland, Vodafone and WM Morrison, will also chair Aston Martin’s nomination committee. She spent the bulk of her career at Coca-Cola, where she was president of the company’s UK and Ireland operations.

Hughes was the chair of RBS’s remuneration committee when it awarded the then RBS boss Stephen Hester a near-£1m bonus following the bank’s government bailout. Hester later renounced the £963,000 payment after succumbing to “enormous political pressure”. Hughes defended the bonus payment, saying it was her “responsibility is to ensure we’ve got talented leadership that feels it is rewarded appropriately for the task they’re doing”.

Aston Martin also appointed the former InterContinental Hotels chief executive Richard Solomons, the former Sainsbury’s executive Imelda Walsh, the former Deutsche Bank director Peter Espenhahn, Arab British Chambers of Commerce director Lord Carrington and Tensie Whelan, a professor of business and society at New York University.

“The independent directors will bring significant experience to the board as we prepare to float and deliver fully on our business plan commitments,” Palmer said.

Hughes said she had been impressed by the turnaround of the business and excited by its future. “Private shareholders have displayed successful long-term stewardship to date and are fully committed, as am I, to transitioning the group, the board and its governance arrangements to those expected of a world-class public company operating from the UK.”

Aston Martin, which is majority-owned by investment firms from Italy and Kuwait, plans to float at least 25% of its shares. Eligible employees and customers of the carmaker will be able to apply to buy shares at the offer price.

The flotation will be a big test of the appetite of investors to back British companies as very few large IPOs are expected before the UK is scheduled to leave the EU in March 2019.

Palmer has said that Brexit is not a huge concern for the company because it sells relatively few cars in continental Europe and is also used to dealing with tariffs in most of its export markets. However, the company imports about two-thirds of its parts from Europe.