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GKN Ditches CEO-Designate Before He Starts Amid Alabama Unit Woe

Plane-Parts Maker GKN Drops New Chief Six Weeks Before He Starts

(Bloomberg) -- GKN Plc reversed course on a leadership change, appointing an interim chief executive officer instead of an earlier plan to promote its aerospace-division head to the top post, as the U.K. manufacturer projected a writeoff at a troubled site in Alabama.

Anne Stevens, currently a non-executive board member with an automotive and aerospace background, will become interim CEO on Jan. 1, while Kevin Cummings, who was set to take position, is leaving the company immediately, Redditch, England-based GKN said Thursday in a statement. New writeoffs at the Alabama plant are likely to range between 80 million pounds ($105 million) and 130 million pounds.

The company said in October that it was reviewing inventory and receivables at the U.S. site, which led to a 15 million-pound charge, and CEO Nigel Stein said at the time that the North American aerospace unit “has not been great.” GKN said Thursday that other forecasts for 2017 remain unchanged.

Stevens, who will succeed Stein when he retires, has been chief operating officer for the Americas at Ford Motor Co. and is a former CEO of transport and medical-technology supplier Carpenter Technology Corp., GKN said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tom Lavell in Frankfurt at tlavell@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chris Reiter at creiter2@bloomberg.net, Tom Lavell

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