Marks and Spencer CEO Marc Bolland to QUIT after disastrous Christmas sales

He said: “Over the last six years Marc Bolland has led Marks & Spencer through a period of necessary change”.

Bolland, who joined Marks and Spencer six years ago, will be succeeded by Steve Rowe, now executive director of General Merchandise.

Analysts said Bolland had put M&S on a stronger footing – with the food business taking market share and online sales improving – giving Rowe a stronger platform than Bolland had when he took over from Stuart Rose in 2010.

The 48-year-old, who began his career at the company working on Saturdays at his local store in Croydon, south London, has been chosen to succeed current chief executive Marc Bolland and will take the reins in April.

Robert Swannell, the chairman of Marks and Spencer, said that the group had carried out a “rigorous” succession planning programme and had determined that Mr Rowe was the best candidate to take the group forward.

Londoner Rowe, 48, faces the task of finding the formula that eluded Bolland at M&S; he must lure shoppers back to its clothes, dispelling its outdated image of recent years, and seek to match the success enjoyed by its upmarket food business.

“Also we think M&S, like several other clothing retailers, has educated its customers to wait for sales and we think it could do with more “first price right price” product and more coherent pricing”, RBC said.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom for the High Street bastion however which recorded record sales in the Christmas week at its food division.

‘General merchandise sales were disappointing, ‘ said Bolland.

Marks & Spencer was the only riser in the FTSE 100 in early trading after the announcement, with shares up 6p to 445p a share, a rise of 1.5 per cent.

Today the company announced that GM sales dived another 5% in the 13 weeks to December 26 and 5.5% on a like-for-like basis. Online deals are believed to be up by as much as a third, as M&S recoups from issues at the distribution center for its web business past year.

In July 2015, Rowe was appointed Executive Director, General Merchandise with a mandate to improve the overall performance of that business.

It’s always a surprise when the CEO of a big company leaves unexpectedly but Marks & Spencer Boss Marc Bolland (below) has been supping in the last chance saloon for a while now. “In particularly hard market conditions Steve led the Food business to produce 12 consecutive quarters of like-for-like growth, grow its margin and all its key performance metrics, continue its record of outstanding innovation and set out a path for further profitable growth”.

“We continued to prioritise gross margin and held back from the heavy discounting seen across the market in the run up to Christmas”. The Group reported that General Merchandise gross margin was up significantly during the period.