Warren East profile: The Rolls-Royce troubleshooter
Warren East, the chief executive with a penchant for playing a church organ, is leaving Rolls-Royce, eight years after he was parachuted in as chief executive to navigate Britain’s aerospace champion through what turned out to be the most turbulent period in its 116-year history.
On his second day at Rolls-Royce the Welshman was forced to issue a profit warning – the fourth of what would become five in a 20-month period – and presided over a record £4.6bn loss in his second year.
“I didn’t know quite how bad it was,” he recalled as he began to uncover just how parlous the Rolls-Royce business was when he started in 2015. “I don’t think anybody did. It was more a case of survival.”
East, now 60, was called off the board of directors at Rolls to take the helm of the jet engine maker after the surprise announcement by his predecessor, John Rishton, that he was to retire after only four years in the post.
Shares rose when East was named as Rishton’s successor, as investors welcomed the appointment of the engineer, and they fell 13% on Thursday when it was announced he would step down at the end of this year.
Two years before he was appointed chief executive of Rolls, East had retired from Cambridge-based microchip design company Arm, where over a decade he had helped make it a critical global partner for companies from Apple to Samsung, but the task at Rolls-Royce would prove to be the defining challenge of his career.
The company had previously enjoyed two decades of unprecedented success under the leadership of Sir Ralph Robins and Sir John Rose, cementing the company’s place as the world’s second-largest maker of aircraft engines after General Electric.
However, it was left to East, the part-time church organist, who confesses
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