The former boss of Balfour Beatty, the infrastructure group, has been recruited by the government to join the board of the publicly owned British Steel.
Sky News has learnt that Andrew McNaughton is among a crop of new directors signed off by Jonathan Reynolds, who was reappointed as business secretary by Andy Burnham last week.
Alongside Mr McNaughton, the government has hired Jon Bolton, co-chair of the UK Steel Council; Janet Ashdown, who serves on the board of London-listed Victrex; and David Bond, who oversaw Sheffield Forgemasters' transition into public ownership in 2021, as non-executive directors.
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The series of appointments come as Whitehall prepares for a legal fight with its former Chinese owner over the nationalisation of Britain's second-largest steel producer.
Jingye Group has indicated that it is considering turning to arbitration in the international courts to claim as much as £1bn compensation over the government's seizure of the business.
Its move into public ownership came 15 months after ministers seized operational control of the business from Jingye Group, its Chinese owner.
Jingye had been threatening to close Scunthorpe's two blast furnaces, with the potential loss of thousands of jobs, and replace them with a new electric arc furnace.
Along with Speciality Steel UK (SSUK), which was part of the tycoon Sanjeev Gupta's steel empire, taxpayers have so far spent close to £650m subsidising the two steel companies over the last 15 months.
Mr Reynolds has also sanctioned the appointments of a trio of executive directors - Kelly Jones, Allan Bell and Brian Lochhead - to British Steel's board, according to a Companies House filing.
The government is expected to run a process to sell British Steel back to the private sector sometime next year.
A government spokesman confirmed the board changes on Wednesday morning.
(c) Sky News 2026: Reynolds recruits former Balfour Beatty chief to nationalised British Steel
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