Coats

Rajiv Sharma

Group Chief Executive

Executive Director	Appointed 2014
Committee membership	Nomination

Key skills and experience

Rajiv became Group Chief Executive on 1 January 2017, having served as an Executive Director since December, 2014.

He has nearly 30 years’ of experience which includes commercial, operations, M&A, strategy, digital and general management. Rajiv joined Coats in November 2010 as Global CEO Industrial and was responsible for developing and executing a growth strategy. He has lived and worked in the US, Europe and Asia.

Other current appointments

Rajiv was appointed as a Non-Executive Director of Senior plc with effect from January 2019.

Previous relevant experience

Rajiv has multi industry global experience. He has managed complex businesses with blue chip companies that include Saab, Honeywell, GE and Shell. The majority of his career has been dedicated to growing or turning around businesses and he has been on the board of joint ventures at both GE and Shell.

Qualifications

Rajiv holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering, as well as an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh, USA.

‘Coats was formed during the first industrial revolution. That’s when basically machines were invented. We are now in the fourth industrial revolution which is all about data mining, data science, artificial intelligence, connected machines.’