ABERDEEN energy-services company Wood Group is to be elevated to the prestigious FTSE 100 index.
The firm, which operates internationally and is worth about £2.4billion, will replace Scottish and Newcastle next week among the ranks of the biggest listed businesses in Britain.
S & N is to drop out following its £7.8billion acquisition by Heineken and Carlsberg.
Wood chief executive Allister Langlands said yesterday: “Wood Group’s entry into the FTSE 100 is further recognition of the strong growth and progress we have achieved over the last two years.
“It is a great testament to the tremendous efforts of all our people around the world and we look forward to building on this over the coming years.”
Wood Group joined the stock market six years ago and its shares have more than doubled in value since then.
Aberdeen will now have two companies in the FTSE 100.
Transport giant FirstGroup joined the index of blue-chip stocks in December, the first time the Granite City had been represented.
A little farther south, Dundee investment company Alliance Trust is also a member of the FTSE 100.
Wood is involved in engineering design, production support and industrial gas-turbine services for customers in the oil and gas and power generation industries worldwide.
It employs more than 24,000 people, including about 4,000 – both offshore and onshore – from sites in the north-east.
Pre-tax profits for 2007 surged 42% to £131million, while turnover was up 28% to £2.238billion.
The company’s chairman, Sir Ian Wood, is the most successful Aberdonian at building an international business around the North Sea oil and gas industry.
He has turned what was once a fishing firm into the UK’s biggest energy-services group.
Sir Ian is a well-known and respected figure in the international oil and gas community and his endeavours have not gone unrecognised – many prestigious awards and honours have come his way, including his knighthood in 1994.
Among his high-level appointments was a three-year term as chairman of Scottish Enterprise up to December 2000.
Sir Ian attended Robert Gordon’s College before graduating from Aberdeen University in 1964 with a first-class honours degree in psychology. He then joined the family business, John Wood and Son, and became managing director in 1967.
The company evolved into two independent businesses – John Wood Group and JW Holdings, the largest fishing company in Scotland, employing more than 600 people.
The Wood family hold 24% of Wood Group stock.