Colin Matthews, 51, is the technocrats’ troubleshooter. Toronto-born, the former chief executive of Hays and Severn Trent has a reputation for being a technician and a safe pair of hands, ideal for BAA where regulatory complexity goes hand in hand with an almost daily need for damage limitation.

Sir Nigel Rudd, the chairman who was responsible for his appointment after a very discreet recruitment exercise, has not worked directly with him before. However, Mr Matthews is understood to have been recommended to Sir Nigel by Sir John Parker, the chairman of National Grid.

Educated at Cambridge and Paris business school, Mr Matthews first came to Sir John’s attention when National Grid was buying Lattice, the owner of gas networks group Transco. He was a director of both Transco and Lattice.

In the last 11 years, Mr Matthews, an engineer by training, has spent no more than two years in any one job.

Following a three-year stint at Bain, the management consultancy in the mid-80s, he has worked at General Electric, British Airways, Transco, Lattice, Hays and latterly water company Severn Trent.

At Hays and Severn Trent, where he held chief executive roles he garnered a reputation for successfully breaking up companies. He demerged Hays’s mail business DX and at Severn Trent, demerged Biffa, its waste business.

If BAA’s owner Ferrovial is forced by the regulator to sell off any of its airports or takes that route because of difficulties refinancing its huge debts, Mr Matthews is adept at profitably spinning off businesses.

His deep knowledge of the aviation sector will also please BAA’s biggest customers - the airlines. His knowledge of aviation goes back to his time at British Airways, where he was first director of engineering then director of technical operations, responsible for all aircraft maintenance, IT and procurement.

Mr Matthews’s time at Severn Trent, in which he had to oversee the fallout from a whistleblower which led to Serious Fraud Office charges being laid against the company, will also have equipped him with the crisis management and public relations skills to deal with the constant criticism levelled at the airports group.

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