There is currently “no plan or prospect” of FirstGroup moving its headquarters from Aberdeen, despite there being no Granite City-based board members at the firm, chief executive Tim O’Toole said yesterday.
The company’s 10-strong board typically meets twice a year in the group’s home city, with other meetings held in different locations to let directors see operations.
Mr O’Toole, a US citizen, splits his time between the family home in Philadelphia and Scotland.
Speaking after the firm’s AGM in Aberdeen, he said he was last in the Granite City just two weeks ago.
“I spend most of my time travelling around operations,” he said, adding the nomadic nature of the board had no bearing on the location of FirstGroup’s headquarters.
Asked if a relocation was on the cards anytime soon, he said: “There is no plan or prospect of it currently.”
But he added he was unable to give a cast-iron guarantee it could never happen.
Questions over FirstGroup’s future as an Aberdeen firm have been around since before Mr O’Toole took the helm in 2010.
The fact a large chunk of the group’s annual revenue is generated from operations in North America has fuelled talk of a potential move.
Speculation about a relocation was rife in 2006, when the company dramatically axed plans for a new HQ and bus depot in the Woodside area of Aberdeen.
It instead ploughed about £20million into transforming premises in King Street into a global base.
