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Marks and Spencer co-chief executive Katie Bickerstaffe is stepping down after two years in the role, leaving Stuart Machin as the sole boss of the UK retailer.
She will leave after the company’s annual shareholder meeting in July to pursue other board roles, M&S said on Thursday, having helped revive the retailer’s fortunes over the past 24 months.
Bickerstaffe and Machin were promoted from joint chief operating officers by chair Archie Norman after former boss Steve Rowe announced plans to quit.
Bickerstaffe has been leading the digital, data and technology aspects of the business since 2022 and reports to Machin, who runs the business day-to-day.
“I’m very grateful to Katie for her support in seeing M&S through this important period in the reshaping of the business. We now have a much stronger business, and she will move on with our very best wishes,” Machin said in a statement on Thursday.
Bickerstaffe is a non-executive on the England and Wales Cricket Board and the housebuilder Barratt Developments. She was previously executive chair of SSE Energy Services and ran the UK and Ireland business of Dixons Carphone.
At the time when she and Machin were appointed co-CEOs, Nick Bubb, an independent retail analyst, described the move to appoint co-chief executives “not just a fudge, but an M&S fudge”.
Norman subsequently defended the decision, saying the retailer was too complex to be run by one “Napoleonic” leader and the company had “a long planned succession”.
