New arrival completes top jobs shake-up after Balfour suffers low margins - Lester is new Balfour boss

Balfour Beatty has headhunted Paul Lester who will leave a œ252,000 job to become managing director of Balfour's UK construction activities, his task being to salvage the performance of a division that is struggling on low margins.

Balfour's UK construction turnover in 1997 will be around œ1 billion. Lester's responsibilities cover Balfour Beatty Construction, Haden Building Services (its M&E business) and electrical engineering contractor Balfour Kilpatrick.

Lester's arrival completes a shakeup of the top posts at Balfour. Last year Mike Welton was promoted to chief executive while Ian Tyler arrived from Hanson to become Balfour's finance director.

Aged 47, Lester is moving from Graseby, an electronic instruments group where he has been chief executive since 1990. His total package at Graseby last year ran to œ252,000. He will take up his newly created post with Balfour on 1 July.

Lester said his mandate from Alan Jones, chief executive of Balfour's parent company BICC, was to improve margins over the next two years. The challenge is to turn last year's unsatisfactory figure of one per cent into a more acceptable three per cent.

Describing his move from Graseby to Balfour, Lester commented: "I see it as a good chance to be involved in a larger company". Graseby has a turnover of œ106 million. Since 1990, Lester moved Graseby's margins up from 3.5 to 10 per cent.

Lester's new patch does not include Balfour's rail or civil engineering business where Andy Rose is md.