UK: Marks & Spencers shakes up management on poor sales
The retailer, which sells clothes, footwear and homeware as well as upmarket foods, said its head of general merchandise Kate Bostock would leave the company on Oct. 1 by "mutual consent." Bostock has been strongly linked to a senior role at ASOS, which declined to comment.
Bostock will be succeeded by John Dixon, a highly regarded M&S veteran of 26 years, who has been the boss of the retailer's food business for the last four years. Dixon will be assisted by Belinda Earl, a former CEO of Debenhams, Jaeger and Aquascutum, who has been appointed style director from Sept. 1.
Steve Rowe, currently director of retail, will succeed Dixon as the head of the food business.
"This has not been a reaction to markets, this is a planned succession," said Bolland.
M&S said sales at UK stores open more than a year fell 2.8 percent in the 13 weeks to June 30, the firm's worst quarterly drop in sales since the third quarter of the 2008/09 financial year.
In May Bolland reduced Marks & Spencer's sales forecast for its three-year growth drive and since then analysts have edged down profit forecasts for the firm's year to end-March 2013 to about 680 million pounds ($1.1 billion).
Shares in M&S, down 14 percent over the last three months, were up 1.5 percent at 326 pence at 0940 GMT, valuing the business at about 5.2 billion pounds ($8.0 billion), on relief that the firm maintained its guidance for the 2012/13 year.
Source: in.reuters.com
