People: Compton to the crease 

Loss-making investment and broking group WH Ireland has appointed ex-Collins Stewart luminary Paul Compton, 47, as chief executive officer. He joins the Manchester-based company from strongly performing hedge fund specialist Toscafund Asset Management and will replace Ireland’s outgoing chief executive officer, Richard Ford, in September.

Compton joins Ireland, whose entrepreneurial non-executive director and backer, ex-Lloyd’s broker Lord Marland, is leaving the board to become parliamentary under-secretary to the Department of Energy, at a testing time. The AIM-quoted group suffered a hefty fall in first-half turnover, which chairman Rupert Lowe blames on one large client who had ‘provided significant revenues’ in the first half of 2009 staying out of the market this time.

The company, which is passing its interim dividend, has made progress in some fields. Its wealth management operations, a part of the business that Ford had beefed up, have shown a healthy increase in assets under management, and Lowe says restructuring and cost cuts have helped keep the company’s balance sheet ‘largely intact’. 

Ireland has undergone a series of upheavals over the past two years, including an aborted get-together with broker Blue Oar (now in the Astaire group) and the abrupt departure of two previous pillars of the company, Laurie Beevers and David Youngman. 

Not surprisingly, Lowe expresses high hopes for Compton, who as head of capital markets at Collins Stewart built up its role in the small- to mid-cap sector with a team that raised £7.6 billion in 234 deals over five years.