Dyson to take over at Punch
IAN Dyson will take over as Punch Taverns’ chief executive in September.
The current finance head of Marks & Spencer (M&S) will take up the challenge of being boss of the UK’s largest pub company.
Punch’s chief executive, Giles Thorley, will stay on board “until an orderly handover has been completed”, Punch said in a statement yesterday.
While he has a number of years experience in the retail and leisure sectors, Dyson will have to get to grips with the pub industry.
Roger Whiteside, who heads Punch’s leased and tenanted pub division, said last week he was disappointed not to have been given the job for which both he and Mike Tye, who leads Punch’s managed pub operation, had applied.
However he believed Dyson’s arrival was “a good appointment”.
“He has the finance skills required and in Mike and I he has people with the necessary operational skills. We should make an extremely strong team,” he added.
Details of Dyson’s pay package will be revealed towards the end of this year when Punch publishes its annual report and accounts.
Meanwhile Punch said he will be earning less with his new employers than the £1m he pocketed with M&S – which included a basic salary of £625,000.
Although Dyson’s pay deal has not been revealed, Thorley’s total pay deal for 2009 was in the region of £681,000.
IAN DYSON MOVES FROM RETAIL TO LEISURE TO FACE
NEW CHALLENGE
THE current group finance director at Marks & Spencer saw that company post a 4.6 per cent rise in annual profit yesterday. But Dyson will face new challenges in the struggling pub sector.
He tendered his resignation to M&S less than 48 hours after Bolland’s arrival as chief executive at the group. He was put in charge of the “20-20” project designed to “deliver a step change” in M&S’s fortunes, which has been hailed as a success.
Raised in the north-west of England, Dyson earned a degree in economics from Leeds University in 1983.
He began his career as a chartered accountant with Arthur Andersen, and became a partner in 1994.
He left that year to become finance director at the Meridien hotels division of Forte. Dyson then went on to join the Hilton Group, where he was group financial controller and financial director for the international hotels division from 1996 to 1999.
He then joined Rank Group as finance director. He went to M&S in 2005, just a year after Stuart Rose was appointed chief executive.
He is married and has two children.