Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne to depart from M&S in May

Marks and Spencer Plc (M&S) has announced that its corporate marketing teams will be devolved into the clothing & home and food businesses. Once this is complete, the company added, Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne, executive director of customer marketing and M&S.com, who has served on the board for the last six years, will leave the business at the end of May.

Commenting on the development, Steve Rowe, the company’s Chief Executive, said in a statement: “Patrick has overseen some extraordinary marketing programmes for M&S corporately and made great strides in laying the foundations of our digital business as well as extending our Plan A credentials. He brought great brand marketing skills and creativity to the business.”

M&S initiates steps to streamline top management

A central plan of this first stage of M&S’s transformation programme, the company further said, is to move towards a faster more commercial M&S built around a family of accountable businesses, each with its own top calibre leadership. This means that much of corporate marketing will now report to the marketing directors of clothing & home and food, under Jill McDonald and Stuart Machin respectively. Initial steps towards this have already been taken with the appointment of Sharry Cramond from Southeastern Grocers to head up food marketing, and the appointment of Nathan Ansell to run clothing & home Marketing.

“Leading M&S’s global marketing agenda and, most recently, our digital transformation at a time of complex retail industry changes has been highly fulfilling. M&S is a very special brand with a powerful relationship with the British public. Its future is in great hands with Steve’s dynamic leadership of the business transformation,” added Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne.

M&S added that a streamlined central marketing team looking after the digital information and data services that support both main businesses and also the oversight of new development businesses, primarily in the digital space, will be retained.

Picture:M&S multimedia library