Lord Smith of Kelvin is to step down as chairman of the Scottish engineering giant Weir Group at the end of the year.
His role will be taken on by Drax Group chairman Charles Berry, who joined the board of Weir on March 1 and has been installed as deputy chairman in the interim period.
Lord Smith said: “The business has been transformed under the leadership of two outstanding chief executives, Mark Selway and Keith Cochrane.
“Weir today is a focused and high-performing group, with an enviable track record of growth and a clear sense of its future direction.”
The move came as Weir said trading in the first quarter of 2013 had been “resilient” and in line with management expectations.
The firm said it continued to expect to return low single-digit growth and broadly stable margins with lower first half revenues offset by more solid trading in the second part of the year.
The group said its first quarter performance had been impacted by a lower opening order book.
