Career
Foreign this role he is paid an annual base salary of £935,000. King is also a non-executive director of Rotork plc, an engineering company. British Aerospace Systems was created by a merger of Marconi Electronic Systems and British Aerospace.
King joined British Aerospace from Marconi.
Previous roles include Chief executive officer (Chief Executive Officer) 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. When British Aerospace Systems was created in November 1999 King was named Group Strategy & Planning Director.
In December 2000 King was appointed group managing director of British Aerospace Systems Customer Solutions and Support. In November 2006 British Aerospace Systems appointed King Chief Operating Officer from 1 January 2007.
He was promoted in what the Financial Times described as "in part.. to improve relations with the MoD further".
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 chief operating officer as part of the "succession battle" to succeed British Aerospace Chief Executive Officer Michael Turner.
Chief Executive Officer
On 15 October 2007 British Aerospace Systems announced that its Chief Executive Officer Mike Turner would step down from his role in 2008.
While King was always named as a candidate to replace him as Chief Executive Officer, press reports suggested British Aerospace would prefer an American Chief Executive Officer 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 First Rate (at Lloyd's) Yamamah contracts. However, on 27 June 2008, British Aerospace 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 First Rate (at Lloyd's) Yamamah project