Ex-Aggreko chairman joins Speedy as non-executive director

Dr Chris masters, the former executive director of power rental leader Aggreko has joined Speedy Hire as a non-executive director, effective on 13 July.

Dr Masters has 20 years of experience as an executive board member of listed companies, including five years from 1997 as executive chairman of Aggreko. Before that he held a number of senior roles at Christian Salvesen Plc, including managing director and chief executive, and at Shell, where he started his business career.

He replaces outgoing non-executive director Peter Atkinson.

Ishbel Macpherson, Speedy's chairman, said Dr Master's extensive experience in equipment hire and logistics would be very valuable to Speedy.

Meanwhile, Speedy has also signed a new £220 million asset-based revolving credit agreement with a syndicate of six banks, replacing its existing £210 million loan facility, which was due to mature in June 2012. Asset based financing is not common among rental companies in Europe but is used by the large US rental firms.

The banks comprise four existing lending banks (Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays Corporate, Lloyds TSB and Burdale Financial) plus Bank of America and GE Capital, who both have wide experience of the US asset based lending market.

Steve Corcoran, chief executive of Speedy, said; "The support of our banks in providing a facility which gives additional headroom and is more flexible is a great vote of confidence and illustrates both the strength of our balance sheet and the quality of our asset base.

"We now have certainty with regard to our medium term funding; this is another key step in our recovery and will underpin our strategy to grow the business in the years ahead."