Caledonia Investments chief executive Will Wyatt will next year step back from the helm and hand the reins to the second person in the history of the £2.5bn investment trust to not be a member of the Cayzer family.
Wyatt (pictured) joined his family’s investment vehicle in 1997, having previously worked at Close Brothers Corporate Finance. He has been executive director on the self-managed investment trust, which owns Seven Investment Management, since 2005 and CEO since 2010. Pending shareholder approval, he will become a non-executive director at the trust. His successor, Mathew Masters, joined the company in 2005, having previously worked at Grant Thornton.
Masters is currently head of quoted equity at Caledonia but will become chief executive designate from 1 April.
His appointment marks the second time a person outside the Cayzer family has led the company. Wyatt’s predecessor Tim Ingram was also a non-family member and led Caledonia from 2002 to 2010, before he moved to Collins Stewart to succeed Terry Smith as chairman.
Caledonia started out as a shipping company in the nineteenth century with the Cayzer family developing it into the world’s largest cargo carrying line. It transitioned into an investment holding company in the 1980s before becoming an investment trust in 2003. The family currently owns 48% of the investment trust and is represented on the board by Wyatt, Charles Cayzer, and Jamie Cayzer-Colvin.
In a statement, Caledonia chairman David Stewart said Wyatt had delivered “outstanding” returns to Caledonia’s shareholders. Stewart added that Masters’ experience in listed and private markets gave the board confidence he would be a worthy successor to Wyatt.
In addition to Masters’ promotion, Caledonia announced it has appointed Lynn Fordham to the board and is in the process of seeking an additional independent non-executive director. Stuart Bridges, who has been on the board for nine years and chairs the audit committee, has announced he will not seek re-election at the AGM.
Fordham, a chartered accountant, was chief executive of investment firm SVG Capital for eight years until 2017. She is currently a non-executive director at Dominos.
There are currently just two women on the Caledonia Investments board, Claire Fitzalan Howard and Shonaid Jemmett-Page, compared with eight men.
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