Mothercare confirms CEO change and salary

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
May 18, 2018

Mothercare on Friday confirmed what everyone already knew - that ousted CEO Mark Newton-Jones was retuning to the company.

What’s more, it also told us how much he will earning with the new CEO joining on a basic salary of £480,000 a year. It said all other terms of his employment contract “remain unchanged.”

He takes up his old job as of Friday, a job he left less than six weeks following his sacking by now-ousted chairman Alan Parker. 

Meanwhile ‘caretaker’ CEO David Wood, who had replaced him, has been moved to the executive post of Group Managing Director as had been widely predicted. The company said the terms and conditions of his employment contract are otherwise unchanged too, which means the under-pressure firm now has an expensive management team at its helm, but one with plenty of experience.

Newton-Jones had been at Mothercare for four years, during which time the company saw its fortunes declining, although this was seen as being more about the shifting nature of UK retail and the chain’s specialist category than anything else. But having held director roles at both Shop Direct and Boohoo (the latter on a non-executive basis), he clearly knows a lot about reshaping businesses for the digital age.

And Wood was previously Group President of Kmart Holding Corp, before which he held a number of senior commercial, marketing and general management positions at Tesco. 

Neither Newton-Jones nor Wood commented on the announcement.