Appointment of Managing Director designate for TransPennine Express
FirstGroup announces that as part of its plans for the mobilisation of the new TransPennine Express franchise, Leo Goodwin has been appointed as Managing Director designate and will lead the new franchise from the launch date of 1 April.
Leo has held several previous roles within FirstGroup. He joined the Group in 1998, initially working at First Great Western in a range of management positions. After the Group’s successful bid for First TransPennine Express in 2003, Leo was part of the management team and later became Commercial Director, during a period in which the franchise saw industry leading levels of passenger growth and a significant expansion of services. In 2013 Leo moved to become Commercial Development Director at our First Rail division.
As previously announced, Liz Collins remains Interim Managing Director for First/Keolis Transpennine Ltd until the new franchise begins.
Commenting, Steve Montgomery, Managing Director First Rail said:
“I am pleased to announce the appointment of Leo to lead our new TransPennine Express franchise. We have exciting plans to help the Government achieve its vision for a Northern Powerhouse as we connect the North and Scotland and keep people moving and communities prospering across the region.”
Commenting, Leo Goodwin said:
“I am delighted to be given the opportunity to build on the successes that First TransPennine Express achieved over the last 11 years, in which we have more than doubled passenger journeys on the network. We will offer ambitious improvements for passengers. Our new franchise will deliver faster and more frequent intercity train services between the major towns and cities in the North and Scotland as well as investment in new trains with millions more seats available, free Wi-Fi and simpler smart and mobile ticketing.”
FirstGroup plc (LSE: FGP.L) is the leading transport operator in the UK and North America and our services help to create strong, vibrant and sustainable local economies. During the last year around 2.4 billion people relied on us to get to work, to education, to visit family and friends and much more and, each day, every one of our 110,000 employees works hard to deliver vitally important services for our passengers.
Our vision is to provide solutions for an increasingly congested world… keeping people moving and communities prospering.
First Rail
FirstGroup is one of the most experienced rail operators in the UK and the only one to run every sort of railway – long distance, regional, commuter and sleeper operations. We carried more than 280 million passengers in 2014/15. We operate two passenger franchises – Great Western Railway (GWR) and First TransPennine Express – and one open access operator, First Hull Trains. We operate the Tramlink network on behalf of Transport for London carrying more than 32 million passengers a year and the Heathrow Connect service in partnership with Heathrow Airport.