Department store Beales has appointed Tony Brown as group chief executive.

Brown, who has been retail director of BHS since 2001, will join the board of Beales on April 1.

He will replace Allan Allkins, who will retire in April. Previously, Brown was operations director at Somerfield and a regional managing director of Asda.

In May, Beales said that, despite ongoing improvements in its assortment and tight cost controls, it continues to find the retail environment challenging. The department store said it would fall short of market expectations for the year to November 3, 2007.