Ian King is the CEO of BAE Systems, responsible for all of the company's business operations. For this role he is paid an annual base salary of £935,000.[1] King is also a non-executive director of Rotork plc, an engineering company.
BAE Systems was created by a merger of Marconi Electronic Systems and British Aerospace. King joined BAE from Marconi. Previous roles include Chief executive officer (CEO) of Alenia Marconi Systems, a partnership between Marconi and Finmeccanica, Finance Director and Deputy Managing Director of Marconi Electronic Systems and non Executive Director of the Canadian Marconi Company.[2][3]
When BAE Systems was created in November 1999 King was named Group Strategy & Planning Director. In December 2000 King was appointed group managing director of BAE Systems Customer Solutions and Support.[4]
In November 2006 BAE Systems appointed King COO with effect from 2007-01-01. King was promoted in what the Financial Times described as "in part designed to improve relations with the MoD further".[5] This follows a general improvement in relations since acrimony in 2003. The previous co-COOs were Chris Geoghegan and Steve Mogford. The Independent described King's appointment as COO as part of the "succession battle" to succeed BAE CEO Michael Turner.[6]
On 15 October 2007 BAE Systems announced that its CEO Mike Turner would step down from his role in 2008.[7] While King was always named as a candidate to replace him as CEO, press reports suggested BAE would prefer an American CEO due to the increasing importance of the United States defence market to the company and the opportunity to make a clean break from corruption allegations and investigations related to the Al Yamamah contracts.[8][9] However on 27 June 2008 BAE announced that it had selected King to succeed Turner with effect from 1 September 2008; The Financial Times noted that King's career at Marconi distances him from the British Aerospace-led Al Yamamah project.[8]