Brown Thomas chief executive Dalton Phillips is leaving the position after less than two years to become chief operating officer of sister company Loblaw, Canada's biggest grocer, which has more than 1,000 stores and 135,000 staff.
Mr Phillips (38) will be second in command to Loblaw executive chairman Galen G Weston Jr (33), son of Brown Thomas owner Galen Weston. The underperforming Canadian group is striving to engineer a recovery after sharp declines in its profitability and share price.
Mr Phillips has held the top executive post at Brown Thomas since May 2005.
"In the short period of two years, Dalton Phillips has made a major contribution to the Brown Thomas business in Ireland. Dalton is currently recruiting his successor, who will be announced in due course. He will continue to remain an active board member of Brown Thomas," said Galen Weston Sr.
Interviews have already started for the top post at Brown Thomas. It is likely to go an external candidate.
Loblaw is a considerably larger organisation than Brown Thomas, which has three brands and had annual sales of €228.49 million in the year to January 2006. Loblaw, with sales of 28.46 billion Canadian dollars (€18.62 billion) in the year to October, has numerous brands positioned at various points on the price spectrum. It operates mass-market supermarkets, high-end supermarkets and large-format superstores.
Amid rising competition in Canada from US retail giant Wal-Mart and unresolved inventory and supply-chain problems, a series of personnel changes last September culminated with the appointment of Mr Weston Jr to the post of executive chairman.
Loblaw said last week that it would incur a pretax charge of C$100-C$120 million in its fourth-quarter in respect of losses on the disposal of liquidated non-food inventory.
With a long-term recovery plan under way, Loblaw said yesterday that it aimed to simplify its organisation with new processes and structures, "with the goals of making the business more efficient and agile and enabling continued product and service innovation and strategic growth".
A graduate of UCD and Harvard University, Mr Phillips returned to Ireland in 2005 after four years with Wal-Mart in South America and Germany and an earlier period with the Asian retail giant, Jardine Matheson.
He also worked in Italy for the Irish Trade Board.
