B&Q owner Kingfisher has named Danish retailer Michael Loeve as the new boss of the DIY chain as it steps up an overhaul and battles against sliding sales.
Mr Loeve, 41, will join as chief executive of B&Q UK and Ireland in September from Coop Danmark - one of Denmark's biggest retailers with around 1,200 stores, where he is group retail director.
He replaces Kevin O'Byrne, who left last month.
Mr O'Byrne is said to have lost out in the race for the top job at B&Q's owner Kingfisher to Veronique Laury, who took over from Sir Ian Cheshire in December.
Mr Loeve takes on the role at a challenging time for B&Q as it sees sales come under pressure and as the wider Kingfisher group embarks on a swingeing shake-up under Ms Laury, who is axing 60 B&Q stores over the next two years impacting around 3,000 jobs.
There has even been speculation that the group might plan to phase out the B&Q brand name.
Sales at B&Q in the UK and Ireland fell 1.1 per cent on a like-for-like basis in the 13 weeks to May 2.
But the group said B&Q was up against strong comparatives from a year earlier, when like-for-like sales rose 9.7% thanks to a later Easter and good weather.
Kingfisher said Mr Loeve has solid experience of business overhauls.
The group said: "Michael is an experienced retailer, with 12 years' experience in senior roles across retail operations, supply chain, IT and strategy.
"He has a strong track record of leading successful business transformation, through focusing on customer needs whilst remaining close to the operations."
Mr Loeve oversees five retail brands at Coop Danmark and previously headed up its 250-strong SuperBrugsen chain as managing director.
He also worked at Copenhagen Airports for a two year stint, as vice president of operations, until 2011.
Ms Laury said: "He is an experienced retailer who will form an important part of the new diverse international team we are putting together at Kingfisher. I look forward to working with him."
Mr Loeve added: "Home improvement is a great market with huge potential and B&Q has a strong position within it, however there is more that we can do to maximise its strengths.
"With a better and more unique offer at good prices where customer needs come first, all backed by the scale of a unified Kingfisher, we will transform and grow B&Q, helping our customers to have better homes and better lives."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article