New chairman at Lavendon Group

Lavendon Group's chairman, David Hollywood, has resigned from the company and will be replaced by John Standen, Lavendon's senior independent director.

Lavendon said that Mr Hollywood, who joined Lavendon as a non-executive director in April 2007, had resigned because his other business activities - including the finance directorship of a sizeable private company - meant that he was unable to devote enough time to Lavendon.

The new chairman, John Standen, was chief executive of corporate finance at BZW, the banking arm of Barclays Bank, from 1993 to 1995. He is non-executive chairman of Stanelco plc and Xploite plc. Mr Standen joined Lavendon as a non-executive director in 2005.