Kingfisher appoints new Chief People Officer

Kingfisher plc, the international home improvement company, is pleased to announce the appointment of Emily Lawson as Chief People Officer. She will join the business in October. The appointment completes the international leadership team put together by Kingfisher CEO Véronique Laury.

Emily was previously Group HR Director at Wm Morrison Supermarkets PLC and a Partner at McKinsey & Co where she held various roles including leading the Human Capital Practice.

During her time at Wm Morrison Supermarkets PLC, Emily led HR programmes in the areas of business performance, talent, diversity, learning and development, cultural engagement and reward. During her 15 years at McKinsey she worked across sectors including pharmaceuticals, telecoms, banking and energy, with a focus on leading multi-year performance transformation programmes. She was responsible for the firm’s work on talent and people management including delivering leadership, operational performance improvement, diversity and cultural change programmes.

Commenting on the appointment Véronique Laury, Chief Executive Officer of Kingfisher, said: “I’m delighted that Emily will join us in October as Chief People Officer. Her breadth of previous experience is ideally suited to the ‘One’ Kingfisher plan to create a single, unified company where customer needs come first. I have no doubt she is the right person to help us translate this goal into a reality. I look forward to working with her.

“Women account for around half our customers and make about three quarters of home improvement decisions, and we recognise the importance of building a pipeline of management talent to reflect that trend. I am therefore pleased to note that Emily’s appointment brings the proportion of women on our seven-strong leadership team to over 50%.”

“Our leadership team is now complete and we are continuing to develop our detailed plans at pace.”

Emily Lawson said: “I’m excited to be joining Kingfisher at such an important time in its development. As an international retail business, our 79,000 colleagues in almost 1,200 stores are responsible for how we deliver to customers every day, and are right at the heart of our strategy. I look forward to how we can set all our colleagues up for success, and work together across all our markets to better serve our customers.”

Emily will report to Kingfisher CEO Véronique Laury.

Kingfisher’s leadership team:

Véronique Laury, Chief Executive Officer

Karen Witts, Chief Financial Officer

Arja Taaveniku, Chief Offer & Supply Chain Officer

Emily Lawson, Chief People Officer

Steve Willett, Operations Director, Omnichannel, and Chief Digital & IT Officer

Guy Colleau, Operations Director - Big Box
Alain Souillard, Operations Director - Medium Box

Emily Lawson

Key career dates:

• 2013-July 2015 Wm Morrison Supermarkets PLC, Group HR Director
• 1998-2013 McKinsey & Co, Partner
• 1996-1997 Avitech Diagnostics, Technology Manager and Head of Business Development, Malvern, PA, USA
• 1993-1995 SERC/NATO postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

About Kingfisher plc

Kingfisher operates nearly 1,200 stores in 10 countries in Europe. Our main brands are B&Q, Castorama, Brico Dépôt and Screwfix. Kingfisher also operates the Koçtaş brand, a 50% joint venture in Turkey, with the Koç Group. We employ 79,000 people and nearly six million customers shop in our stores every week. Our purpose is to help and inspire millions of people to improve their homes. For more information please visit www.kingfisher.com