Australia: Boral has appointed Tino La Spina as its Chief Finance & Strategy Officer. He succeeds Rosaline Ng, who will work with La Spina during a transition period and then leave Boral in early 2021.

La Spina is a qualified chartered accountant whose early career was in taxation and audit functions and who has spent the past 25 years in finance, strategy and leadership roles primarily in the airline industry. In 2019 Tino was appointed as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Qantas International, before leaving Qantas in August 2020 due to coronavirus-related industry disruption. He held a variety of strategy and financial roles before being appointed Group Chief Financial Officer in 2014. Prior to joining Qantas in 2006, he spent five years as Finance Director and Deputy CEO of the National Express Group and five years with Ansett.

He has a Bachelor of Business (Accounting) from Swinburne University in Melbourne, a Graduate Diploma Investment & Finance from the Australian Securities Institute and is a Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

UK: Breedon Group plans to appoint Rob Wood as its Group Chief Executive in 2021. He is currently the Group Finance Director. Recruitment for a new Group Finance Director is underway. This will follow the retirement of current head Pat Ward who has held the post since early 2016.

India: Naveen Patnaik, the chief minister of Odisha, has attended the inauguration of Ramco Cement’s new cement grinding plant at Haridaspur. The unit had a cost of just under US$100m and has created 105 direct jobs. A LM 46.2+2 CS type vertical roller mill with a capacity of 3750kW has ordered from Germany-based Loesche in 2018 for the project. The cement producer says that the plant is designed to be ‘totally dust free,’ including bag filters designed to ensure emission levels below 30mg/m³.

Sri Lanka: Insee Cement has appointed Gustavo Navarro as its chief executive officer (CEO) of its operations in Sri Lanka. He succeeds Nandana Ekanayake, according to the Nation newspaper. Ekanayake will remain at the company as chairman of the board. Navarro has previously held chief executive positions for Holcim in Serbia and Russia, and for CRH in Romania.