Pets at Home has a new top dog.
(Picture: Pets at Home )TWO women CEOs were appointed today bolstering the number of females in charge at top UK businesses.
Taylor Wimpey has promoted Jennie Daly from operations director to the top job, replacing Pete Redfern, who has been in charge for 14 years. Taylor Wimpey also has a female chair in Irene Dorner.
And the new top dog at Pets at Home is Lyssa McGowan, poached from Sky where she was chief customer officer. She replaces the departing Peter Pritchard.
There are just eight women CEOs in the FTSE 100 – Daly’s appointment takes that to nine. While the number of women on the boards of big companies has grown lately –they make up around 40% of the directors – female chairs, CEOs and chief financial officers remain clearly in the minority.
Daly’s appointment was seen as somewhat of a snub to activist investor Elliott, which was pushing for an external candidate. That adds to a feeling in the City that Elliott’s track record at enforcing change is lately patchy.
Elliott had asked for a new CEO who “had not been party to the underperformance to date”.
The company said her appointment “follows a thorough recruitment and selection process”.
Dorner added that Daly’s “strong focus on execution, combined with her customer and people-focussed skills, set her apart from the other candidates”. Her base salary will be £750,000.
McGowan will takeover at Pets, a FTSE 250 business, in June on a basic salary of £580,000. She said she is “thrilled” by the job at a company with a “strong purpose-led culture fuelled by the shared passion of over 15,000 colleagues and Partners to care for pets, and the people who love them”.
HSBC’s retail team welcomed the appointment. A note to clients said: “It might come as a bit of a surprise, but we consider this to be a good hire. There are clear links between the customer life-time value focus of a business like Sky and the annuity-like behaviour that Pets at Home is trying to build in its customer base. Also, a strong digital focus will be key to reaching Pets at Home’s ambitions, and Ms McGowan would seem to bring this from her current experience.”
Pets At Home shares rose 3p to 410p. Taylor Wimpey shares slipped 1p to 148p.
