Dame Sharon White, the former chair of John Lewis, has been appointed European head of the Canadian public pension fund manager that holds investments in companies including Eurostar and Heathrow.
White has been given the official title of managing director and head of Europe at Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and will start in January.
White, the shortest-serving chair in the history of the John Lewis Partnership and who stepped down as chair in September, had been due to leave the retailer next February but left early to make way for the former Tesco boss Jason Tarry.
The announcement of White’s decision to step down came a month after she repoted that the group’s turnaround would take two years longer than planned and cost more money.
John Lewis ditched its annual staff bonus for the second time in three years in March last year, after the group slumped to a worse-than-expected £230m full-year loss.
White’s tenure had been mired in controversy, including a reported plan to dilute its employee-owned mutual model by selling a stake in the business to raise more than £1bn, which was shelved after she narrowly won a vote of confidence in which staff backed her to continue but expressed dismay at the retailer’s poor performance.
Marc-André Blanchard, the head of CDPQ Global and global head of sustainability, said in an internal memo that White’s “expertise and collaborative approach” would boost the fund’s ambitions for growth in the UK and Europe.
In the memo, which was first reported by Bloomberg, he said the UK was the fund’s largest investment destination outside North America. As of the end of last year CDPQ had C$34bn (£19.2bn) invested in the UK.
CDPQ opened an office in London in 2016, which is its regional headquarters for Europe.
Investments include the UK power generator First Hydro Co as well as Eurostar and Heathrow, although the fund was one of a number of investors that this year reportedly wanted to sell their stakes in the airport.
International investments include the Canadian convenience store chain Alimentation Couche-Tard, which in September had a $39bn (£31bn) takeover offer for the owner of Japan-headquartered global convenience store chain 7-Eleven rebuffed. CDPQ’s net assets totalled C$452bn as at the end of June.
White, who two years ago scrapped John Lewis’s 97-year-old “never knowingly undersold” price promise, which was reinstated in September, joined the retailer from the media regulator Ofcom in 2019. She was appointed as chief executive of Ofcom in 2014 from the Treasury, where she held the role of second permanent secretary.
An economist by training, White spent 25 years in the public sector and government, including spells in the British embassy in Washington DC, at the World Bank and as director general in the Department for International Development. She also spent time in the No 10 policy unit during Tony Blair’s Labour administration.
