A NEW finance director has been appointed to take over at Jarvis, the troubled York-based engineering group.

John O'Kane, 47, leaves his role as group finance director at Eco-Bat Technologies Limited to step into the shoes of Alasdair Marnoch.

Mr O'Kane joins the board at the end of this month and takes over as finance director at the end of May when Mr Marnoch leaves to become group finance director of Xafinity, the London financial and software services consultancy.

Mr Marnoch's departure was agreed at the time of his appointment to Jarvis plc with a remit last year to financially restructure the group in its battle for survival after overstretching itself on contracts, particularly in the area of private finance initiatives. At one stage, the group fell £246.7 million into the red.

Its difficulties came in the wake of the Potters Bar rail crash four years ago. The company was responsible for the faulty railway points at the centre of the disaster, in which seven people were killed.

Mr Marnoch, with chief executive Alan Lovell, oversaw a revival which involved quitting construction and non core businesses to focus on UK rail renewal, roads and plant hire work; and getting investors to approve a debt-for-equity restructuring.

One of the cost-cutting measures was to move from Jarvis House into a smaller HQ at Meridian House in The Crescent, York, where Mr O'Kane will be based.

A Fellow of the Institute Of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, Mr O'Kane has previously held senior management roles with ICI and Samsung Electronics in the UK, and with KPMG in South Africa.

More recently, he was group finance director of both Peterhouse Group Plc and Kelda Group Plc. Welcoming him to the board, Steve Norris, Jarvis' executive chairman, said: "I am pleased that we are now able to put in place another building block in the recovery of the Jarvis Group."

Updated: 10:50 Tuesday, April 18, 2006