Debt-burdened Drake & Scull International gets yet another CEO

Dubai: Drake & Scull International has confirmed Munir Mansour as its latest CEO – a position that has seen several changes in the last 24 months. In another top level executive shakeup at the engineering company, Peter Lalor will be the new Chief Financial Officer.

The CEO change has come as a surprise to the market – Drake & Scull had been working on ways to renegotiate its debt pile with lenders. Multiple market sources say these talks were yielding progress, and that a deal on a new payment plan was in the final stages of being hammered out.

At the same time, the company is trying to get compensation from a previous management, which it says had run the once blue-chip entity into the ground through mismanagement and funds misuse. The Abu Dhabi authorities are hearing claims related to this.

“There have been at least six CEO changes through Drake & Scull’s recent past – those belonging to the previous management and more recently,” said one industry source. “Not one CEO has remained long enough to make a decisive impact.

"It’s emblematic of what’s going on in the construction industry. when there is a systemic lack of liquidity, project backlogs don't mean much.