Australian building products maker Boral has appointed the 61-year-old head of US operations as its new chief executive.

Mike Kane starts officially in the head role on October 1, replacing interim chief executive Ross Batstone.

Mr Batstone has been in the role since May, after former chief executive Mark Selway lost the support of Boral’s board and stood down.

Mr Kane joined Boral in February 2010 as president of Boral USA, where he has worked for the past two-and-a-half years.

Born and raised in the US, Mr Kane has worked in the construction and housing industry his entire career.

He acknowledged that Boral had gone through significant change during the past two years due to challenging market conditions in Australia and the US and he would be working to turn this around.

“I’ll be working with my team over the next six months to define a clear path forward to achieve both our immediate and longer-term objectives, ” Mr Kane said in a statement on Monday.

Priorities included maximising cash generation, further aligning Boral’s operational portfolio and delivering benefits from its manufacturing initiative.

Morningstar head of equities research Peter Warnes said it was not a issue that Mr Kane had never worked in Australia before and he may have been chosen because Boral wanted to focus on the US market.

Mr Warnes he said he was concerned that choosing a 61-year-old as the new chief showed that Boral was not looking at the long-term future of the company, considering the problems it has faced in the past few years.

“At 61 you’ve got to be thinking short term,” he said.

“That to me doesn’t send the message that the company is getting on the front foot. I would have thought they’d go for someone younger.”

Mr Batstone will remain at Boral as a consultant until his retirement in July 2013.

Al Borm, president of Boral Roofing in the US, has been named as the new president of Boral USA.

Shares in Boral closed three cents at $3.42.