AECOM said Monday that Chief Financial Officer W. Troy Rudd would be elevated to CEO effective Oct. 1. Rudd will succeed Michael Burke, who is retiring after six years as chief executive.
Lara Poloni will also move up to president from chief executive of AECOM’s Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) business, according to a press release from the Los Angeles-based infrastructure multinational.
“Following a comprehensive six-month search process that considered internal and external candidates, the Board concluded that Troy is best suited to lead AECOM at this pivotal time. We enter this new chapter providing greater certainty to all our stakeholders that AECOM is moving decisively to sustain its solid momentum, driven by its ongoing transformation into a professional services business,” Steven Kandarian, lead independent director of the AECOM Board of Directors, said in the release.
Burke’s retirement as chairman and CEO was announced last fall. At the time he was expected to step down in March, but that was delayed amid the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported. He has held several executive roles since joining the company in 2005, including chief financial officer and president.
Rudd has been with AECOM since 2009, starting as a vice president and moving up over time to become chief financial officer and executive vice president in October 2015.
Poloni has worked at AECOM for more than 25 years, including as chief executive for its Australia and New Zealand branch from 2014 and taking over the EMEA business in October 2017, the release says.
Reuters reported Monday that Rudd’s selection as CEO led to the exit from AECOM’s board of Peter Feld, managing member of the hedge fund Starboard Value. In his June 12 resignation letter, Feld said Rudd’s appointment had not been on the agenda for the board meeting in which the vote was conducted, and that other “highly qualified candidates” were discarded. The board voted 7-3 in favor of Rudd, Reuters reported.
AECOM employs about 56,000 people worldwide, and earned just over $20 billion in revenue during 2019.
In January, AECOM completed the $2.4 billion sale of its Management Services business to private-equity firms Lindsay Goldberg and American Securities. That business, which contracts with the Department of Energy and other U.S. government agencies, is now the stand-alone company Amentum.
AECOM has also announced its plans to sell its stake in the joint venture with EnergySolutions for decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in San Diego County, Calif. The company has not identified the anticipated buyer.
Nora Khalil is leaving the National Nuclear Security Administration to become the lead Republican staffer on the Senate Appropriations panel that writes the agency’s annual budget bill each year, a source familiar with the move said.
Khalil is now the agency’s associate administrator for external affairs. She will replace Adam DeMella, who is leaving Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-Tenn.) staff to work in Washington for the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Alexander chairs the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee, but the septuagenarian senator and former Tennessee governor is not standing for re-election this year. The subcommittee gets first crack each year at the spending bill that covers DOE, its semiautonomous NNSA, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
