When you’re in the middle of a major transformation programme it pays to recruit leaders with experience of significant organisational change.
In this respect new Dixons Carphone group chief financial officer Bruce Marsh certainly fits the bill.
Marsh, who spent 13 years at what was then Dixons Retail earlier in his career, will re-join the business from Tesco where as finance director for the UK and Ireland he’s been a key figure in the grocer’s revival under recently-departed CEO Dave Lewis.
When Marsh joined the business in 2015 he was immediately thrust into the centre of an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into a black hole in Tesco’s accounts.
Almost six years later, not only has Marsh helped turn the ship financially, he along with Lewis’s other loyal lieutenants has helped rebuild the retailer’s reputation as a good corporate citizen, culminating in a recent decision to pay back millions of pounds in business rates relief.
Regarded by colleagues as a challenging and effective leader, Marsh’s reputation as a strategic thinker was strengthened during a spell at Kingfisher between 2008 and 2015. He spent his first three years responsible for group strategy before moving on to run the group’s Future Homes innovation hub, which focused on the development of disruptive digital applications and new innovation brands.
This experience with emerging technology is certain to have appealed to his new boss Alex Baldock whose aim as Dixons Carphone CEO is to democratise technology so it is accessible to everyone.
Baldock’s strategy is built around the notion of creating “One Business” with a simpler and lower cost infrastructure, and a profitable more cash generative mobile business. Baldock was keen to pay tribute to the part played by outgoing CFO Jonny Mason in the strides the business has made in the quality of its mobile proposition and Marsh will be expected to help sustain the mobile momentum as well as maintaining a sharp focus on cash and cost control.
From a professional perspective, now feels like a good time for Marsh to take on a new challenge. Like any incoming CEO, new Tesco boss Ken Murphy is keen to stamp his own mark on the business both strategically and through his senior appointments. In October, Tate & Lyle finance chief Imran Nawaz was named as the successor to outgoing CFO Alan Stewart – a position Marsh himself may have had designs on landing.
As it is he joins a business that has made no secret of its desire to recruit transformational leaders in the mould of relative newcomers like Mark Allsop (chief operating officer), Ed Connolly (chief commercial officer) and Lindsay Haselhurst (chief supply chain officer).
From July, when he is due to begin his new role, we can add the name of Bruce Marsh to the list of Dixons Carphone’s change makers.