Abcam announces Wood as new finance chief

Life science research tools firm Abcam announced on Monday the appointment of Gavin Wood as its chief financial officer.

The AIM-traded firm said Wood, who is the former executive vice president and CFO of Affymetrix, is to join the company on 18 July and succeed Jeff Iliffe after a handover period on 12 September.

Abcam’s board said Wood gained “considerable” financial leadership experience during a long tenure at Affymetrix, where he held a number of positions over a ten-year period including VP finance and international controller, based in the UK.

He was appointed EVP and CFO in 2013, and led that company’s global finance and information technology functions based in the Santa Clara head office, prior to Affymetrix’s $1.3bn acquisition by Thermo Fisher Scientific in April.

“We are delighted to welcome Gavin to Abcam as we enter another exciting phase of growth and leadership in our industry,” said chief executive Alan Hirzel.

“Gavin is a well-regarded public company CFO and brings directly relevant industry experience to Abcam.

“We were all impressed by his track record of financial control, systems implementation experience, market knowledge and transactional experience at Affymetrix,” he added.

Wood is a Chartered Accountant who qualified with Morgan Brown Spofforth in 1997, before moving to Grant Thornton.

In 1999 he joined the Unipart Group where he held a number of positions including business unit controller and business process manager for a major ERP system implementation in North America.