Next chairman to step down

British high street retailer Next has confirmed that non-executive chairman John Barton will step down from the board and retire and will be succeeded by Michael Roney.

Barton, who is 72, joined the Next board in 2002 and took up the chairmanship in 2006, and he will leave his position on August 1, 2017.

In a statement, Next said that he had made "an outstanding contribution" to the company over the last fifteen 15 years and that his “leadership, experience and wise counsel have been tremendously valuable over that time”.

Roney, the current chairman of Grafton Group, has been appointed as an independent non-executive director, deputy chairman and chairman designate with effect from February 14. He will take up the chairman’s role on August 1.

Next said that the new chairman has “extensive business experience” as he was chief executive of Bunzl, a FTSE 100 listed distribution and outsourcing business, from 2005 until his retirement in April 2016. He is also a non-executive director of Brown-Forman Corporation.

The news follows Next’s chief executive Lord Simon Wolfs stating that he expecting this year to be “even tougher” and that the group was facing "exceptional levels of uncertainty" due to consumer spending slowing and the uncertainty caused by the UK’s decision to leave the EU.