ASSOCIATED British Ports (ABP), owners and operators of Southampton has announced that Chris Clark, at present the chief executive of speciality chemicals company Johnson Matthey, is to become the group's new non-executive chairman.

Mr Clark, aged 62, has spent his entire career at Johnson Matthey and retires from the company later this month before taking up his ABP appointment at the beginning of August.

He comes to the appointment as ABP comes to terms with the fact that the government has refused permission for the development of the proposed Dibden Terminal container berths on Southampton Water, resulting in concerns over a possible slow-down in future trade at the port.

Southampton remains one of ABP's top performing UK ports, annually handling 37 million tons of cargo, well in excess of 200 separate cruise ship calls and 750,000 vehicles for the import and export sectors.

Mr Clark was appointed to the board of Johnson Matthey in March 1990, becoming chief operating officer in 1996 and chief executive in June 1998. At a senior management level, Mr Clark has been responsible for developments across all the company's businesses.

Under his leadership, Johnson Matthey, which currently has a market capitalisation of more than £2 billion, joined the FTSE 100 in 2002.

"ABP is an excellent company with great growth prospects and I look forward to working with the management team to embrace the opportunities that arise in the future," said Mr Clark, who is also deputy chairman of Rexam, the world-wide consumer packaging group, and a non-executive director of FKI, the international engineering group.