The British Exporters Association (BExA) has appointed two joint chairmen to replace Jon Coleman, who will be retiring as group treasury, export and structured finance of BAE Systems, as well as stepping down as BExA chairman at the end of March.

This is the first time the position of chairman will be shared between two people. The chairmen will focus on distinct areas of responsibility, with Marcus Dolman, assistant vice-president of ECA and sales finance at Rolls-Royce, covering large exporters and Dints International’s CEO Geoffrey de Mowbray covering the micro, small and medium enterprises exporters. They will jointly cover the finance provider and support company members.

“BExA has made significant progress in the last few years and it was decided that, given the increasing responsibility of the chairman and the differing requirements of large corporates and SMEs, we would proceed with a joint chairman role to best serve our growing member base,” de Mowbray tells GTR.

Dolman has been involved with BExA since 2013, as Rolls-Royce representative first and BExA industry committee chairman later, while de Mowbray, as well as being BExA representative for Dints International and a council member, also won the title of GTR BExA Young Exporter of the Year in 2013.

In a statement, BExA thanks Coleman for the work done to raise the organisation’s profile over the past four years: “He has built on the association’s export credit agency (ECA) benchmarking work in driving real change at UK Export Finance; providing UK exporters with a flexible, proactive world -class ECA.”