Rok: Rob Olorenshaw steps into new top post

Rok, the maintenance and building services group, has created the new post of chief operating officer and Rob Olorenshaw has been appointed to the position.

A knock-on effect of this change at the top is that Rok’s current operations director John Samuel leaves with immediate effect.

Samuel had been a member of Rok’s main board.

Olorenshaw joined Rok in 2006 as people director.  Prior to that he was operations director for the Bank of Ireland UK Financial Services.

In the newly created role at Rok, he will be responsible for a wide range of support service functions including IT, supply chain, customer relations and human resources.  

The creation of the role enables Garvis Snook, chief executive, to have a “far greater active day-to-day role” within the company's business and with its regional managing directors.  

Stephen Pettit, Rok's chairman, said: “Rok has undergone a major transition over the last three years.”

Rok’s share price has slid dramatically in the past month, dropping by more than 70%.

Yesterday, after the Stock Market closed for active trading at 4pm, Rok was the subject of two price monitoring extensions – a procedure invoked when the size of the gap between a share’s sell price and its buy price (on offer by market-makers) is excessively wide.

If one extension period is insufficient for the overhang of trades still to be settled at the end of a day’s trading, because dealers are still unable to offer buy and sell prices within the difference that the Stock Market’s good practice rules call for, then a second extension period is granted.

The first was triggered at 4.37pm yesterday and a second was announced at 4.41pm.