Doug Flynn described Rentokil as his “last big challenge” when he joined the rat-catching firm two years ago. Perhaps then he had not guessed quite how big a challenge it would be.

Just four months after his arrival at the company, with a £2.4 million golden hello, the Australian had to fight off Gerry Robinson, the former Granada boss, who attempted to install himself as executive chairman and return cash to shareholders.

After a protracted three-month battle, shareholders chose to back the straight-talking Mr Flynn as the best man to turn around the fortunes of the company.

He in turn berated Mr Robinson for wasting £20 million of Rentokil shareholders’ money in fighting off his unwanted advances.

Since then Mr Flynn, who is seen as a tough and sometimes antagonistic operator, has carried out his radical overhaul of Rentokil, selling off less promising divisions such as armed guarding and linens to focus on higher-growth areas such as pest control and parcel delivery. The group bought 50 small companies for a total of £96 million in the first half of the year.

It has been a rocky ride but yesterday Mr Flynn, 58, finally indicated that he expected profits to grow for the first time in four years. The moment will be as welcome to Mr Flynn as it is to Rentokil shareholders.

Despite being wooed for some two years by John Fairfax Holdings, Mr Flynn decided that the Australian newspaper publisher was being too slow about agreeing to terms. He chose to quit his previous job as chief executive of global marketing services company Aegis to sign up to manage the rat-catching company in April 2005.

At the time, Mr Flynn said it would be “the last job I do before I retire to a beach”. He joined the Aegis board in 1998 as a nonexecutive director and was appointed chief executive the following year.

The marketing firm doubled in size under Mr Flynn’s guidance, transforming itself from a European media-buying agency into a marketing services group with staff in more than 60 countries.

Before joining Aegis, Mr Flynn spent 13 years with News Corporation, parent company of The Times, in the UK and Australia, latterly as managing director of News International where he oversaw major structural and management changes.

Before that, he spent 10 years working for ICI, the chemicals firm, in Australia and Hong Kong.

Having graduated from Australia’s Newcastle University with a degree in chemical engineering in 1972, Mr Flynn joined ICI as an engineer in the firm’s Australian explosives division, moving up through the company to a managerial post in strategy planning.