N Brown chair steps down, successor announced

British retailer N Brown has announced its chairman Matt Davies will step down on March 31 “to spend more time on his other business activities”.

Davies leaves after three years in the position during which he oversaw a significant period of change at the company, which owns brands Simply Be, Jacamo and JD Williams.

In December, the Manchester-based business completed a 100 million pound that it said will help strengthen its balance sheet and “allow targeted investments to accelerate delivery of growth strategy to capitalise on the structural tailwinds in the group's markets”.

For the third quarter, the company reported an 8.8 percent drop in revenue, but that was a significant improvement on the 21.9 percent and 13.4 percent drops it saw in Q1 and Q2, respectively.

The company also recently moved its listing from the main stock market to the junior AIM exchange.

N Brown names Ron McMillan as new chair

Ron McMillan, who is currently a senior independent director and audit committee chair, will relinquish his roles and succeed Davies as chairman.

McMillan is also currently audit committee chair and senior independent director of B&M European Value Retail SA and SCS Group Plc, and audit committee chair of Homeserve Plc.

Gill Barr will succeed McMillan as senior independent director, while on an interim basis, Vicky Mitchell will assume the audit committee chair role.

Mitchell chairs the financial services board and has been a member of the audit committee since January 2020. A recruitment process is underway for an additional independent non-executive director who will become the permanent audit committee chair, the company said.

Image: N Brown media gallery