As new appointments to retail’s top jobs nearly doubled, UK retail firms picked more women than ever to take leadership positions with many of them first-time CEOs, Retail Week can reveal.

In total, there were 40 new retail chief executives, MDs and interim CEOs in 2025, according to the latest Korn Ferry UK Retail CEO report, shared exclusively with Retail Week. That was the highest number in three years and nearly double the 22 appointed in 2024. 

This included 14 female business leads, which is both the most ever and the greatest share of top retail hires that are women, since Korn Ferry first started collecting data in 2012.

 

Many of these women were first-time chief executives or business leaders, including Kerry Byrne at Belstaff, Clodagh Moriarty at Dunelm and Nicole Clayton at Pandora UK. The data includes managing directors such as Katja Ahola Klamkin at Tesco Clothing & Home, and Karen O’Rourke of H&M UK, as well as interim chief executives like Sarah Ashby of Mamas & Papas.

“Last year represented a major breakthrough in the number of women moving into the CEO seat,” said Sarah Lim, MD, consumer board and CEO services. “Not only this, but almost all of those female appointments were promotions to the role of CEO for the first time; a very noticeable shift from previous years.

“We are currently going through a generational shift in leadership in the industry, with many seasoned retail CEOs opting to go plural or fully retire, and the emergence of the next generation of leaders represents an exciting time for the industry.”

In sector terms, fashion was the retail sector with the largest number of new leaders, with 20 changes during 2025. The highest profile change was at Primark, although no permanent replacement has yet been announced for Paul Marchant, who left the role last spring. 

There were two changes within grocery, with Ashwin Prasad becoming UK chief executive at Tesco and Tom Denyard, a former Tesco executive, appointed as Waitrose MD.

Prasad and Clayton were two out of the three ethnic minority retail leader appointments of last year, with new White Stuff MD Tracey Verghese the third. Korn Ferry said in the report that the number of new ethnic minority chief executives, MDs and interim CEOs has remained largely unchanged since 2015, never totaling more than three per year. 

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