M&S revamps leadership team as next step of strategy

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
May 18, 2021

M&S has unveiled a major realignment of its senior leadership team with CEO Steve Rowe making the changes after saying the firm has finished the ‘Fixing the Basics’ part of its strategy and is ready to take the next step.

On Tuesday he said Katie Bickerstaffe and Stuart Machin now become Joint Chief Operating Officers. Bickerstaffe will oversee the Data, Services, Clothing and Home and International businesses. Machin will continue as MD of Food, but also take responsibility for Operations, Property, Store Development and IT. 

There’s no change to the MD of Clothing and Home with Richard Price staying in his role, while Paul Friston also remains MD of the International divisions.

But elsewhere, Eoin Tonge is taking on Strategy and Transformation Planning as part of his remit as CFO, and Sacha Berendji moves from his current operations role to focus on ‘Future Stores' and accelerate the development of the retailer’s 10X digital stores, store renewal, store rotation and IT.

The Executive Committee will continue to operate as the business’s “central decision-making body” and its membership is unchanged.

Rowe said the company has "built a great team of people” in the past three years but now needs “to move into the next phase, and that means accelerating the pace of change. Stuart and Katie will bring even more impetus to our core businesses. With that I will, with Eoin’s support, be better able to concentrate on building the M&S of the future and our path to growth.”