When John McAdam became the chairman and chief executive of ICI in April 2003 the company's shares were worth 104p. Last year the publicity-shy chief executive agreed to sell the chemicals and paints company for 670p a share.

For some the deal was a sell-out of a once-great British company. For Dr McAdam, who is 60 next month, it cemented his reputation as a great businessman and a shrewd turnaround man.

Born and educated in Ambleside, Cumbria, Dr McAdam has maintained his links with the North West and will take up the chairmanship of United Utilities, one of the region's biggest companies, this summer alongside his new job at Rentokil.

His style is to get under the skin of a business. If it is an operations expert that Rentokil needs, then Dr McAdam and his team fit the bill.

Dr McAdam joined ICI after its acquisition of Unilever's speciality chemicals companies in 1997. He became chairman and chief executive of ICI Paints in 1998, when the first signs of a company turnaround emerged. By 2003, he was ready to assume the hot seat of the group and was seen as a safe pair of hands after Brendan O'Neill, the previous chief executive, resigned when the company's shares fell to a 30-year low. Before joining ICI Dr McAdam had spent 24 years at Unilever, where he held a number of management positions. His route to Unilever, where he arrived in the early 1970s, was not that of the typical graduate trainee. Before committing himself to business he completed a doctorate in chemical physics at Manchester University.

As a Unilever management trainee he held posts in Birds Eye Foods before joining the board of PPF International, Unilever's flavours and fragrance business.

Dr McAdam, who has two adult children, was appointed senior independent director of J Sainsbury on September 1, 2005. Since Akzo Nobel took over ICI he has been courted by some of the country's biggest corporate names. Rolls-Royce appointed him as a non-executive director last month and United Utilities has appointed him chairman designate.

He takes up his chairmanship of Rentokil after the company's annual meeting in May and will have very little time to concentrate his energies on the group before becoming chairman of United Utilities in July.

Dr McAdam is also a member of the University of Surrey Business Advisory Board and of the University of Cambridge Chemistry Advisory Board.

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