Stephen has a strong commercial background with recent experience of other entrepreneurial high growth and private equity supported businesses. He has also served several major global corporations.   

“Stephen joins Xtrac at an interesting time in the 27 year development of the company,” says managing director Peter Digby.  “This year we have enjoyed our highest ever sales revenue and our order book for 2012 continues to be at record levels.  We now have over 250 highly skilled employees, which is close to being at record staffing levels.”

Already the world’s premier supplier of motorsport transmissions, Xtrac now has its sights set on growing its business in the automotive mainstream where it is gaining a strong foothold because of its expertise in transmission design.  It has invested heavily in advanced production facilities to support its motorsport customers, and its manufacturing capability is ideally suited to the build of prototype hybrid and electric vehicle components as well as the low volume production of gearboxes for ultra high performance road cars such as the Pagani Huayra.

“We live in interesting times and I’m excited to be working for a company like Xtrac with its innovative business model where every employee is a shareholder sharing in the success of the company,” says Lane.   “Its products also typify the cutting edge of the automotive industry, where new emerging technologies often make their first appearance in motorsport and in high performance road vehicles before their adoption in the more humble family saloon.”

The appointment follows the retirement of George Koopman who was a longstanding director, employee and shareholder in the company.

“We wish George all the very best in his retirement,” says Peter.  “Over the past twelve years George played a pivotal role in helping to develop the business into what we have today.  We couldn’t have managed this without his expertise, sound advice and the friendship that I and my fellow directors have enjoyed.”

Notes to editors:

Stephen Lane was most recently group financial controller at Trader Media Group (TMG), the business that owns the Auto Trader brand, which, predominantly through the website autotrader.co.uk, is the UK’s leading market place for buying and selling used vehicles.  TMG is jointly owned by Guardian Media Group and Apax private equity.

Prior experience included group financial controller and interim chief financial officer at Sondex Plc, another fast growing company supplying technology services and product solutions to the oil industry, which was acquired in 2007 by General Electric.

Lane was previously finance director at Invensys Climate Controls Europe Product, a division of Invensys Plc which manufactures and distributes heating, commercial refrigeration and air conditioning equipment throughout Europe.  Prior to that he was finance director at Invensys Climate Controls Limited, a market leader in the production of heating controls within the UK.

In his early career Lane served with Thames Water and, before that, qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Coopers & Lybrand, now PricewaterhouseCoopers. Lane gained his BA (Hons) Economics degree at Exeter University and is married with one son and one daughter.