The until now CEO of El Corte Inglés, Víctor del Pozo, in office for the last five years, has left the company “at his own request and for personal reasons”, as announced on Monday by the department store giant, which will create a new delegated executive committee as the highest executive body.
This commission, unanimously approved by the group’s board of directors, will be made up of the president, Marta Álvarez, the directors José Ramón de Hoces and Javier Rodríguez-Arias, and two general directors: José María Folache and Santiago Bau.
Javier Rodríguez-Arias, executive of the group, has been appointed director, while José María Folache will be in charge of directing the retail business and Santiago Bau will assume the businesses of the corporation and those of new creation.
Folache will be in charge of running the retail businesses, and Bau will take over the existing corporate businesses, as well as the newly created ones. Both will report directly to the executive committee.
The new structure aims, according to El Corte Inglés, to “strengthen the management of the company and promote the Strategic Plan of the Board within the framework of the best practices of Corporate Governance.”
“The Board of Directors considers that, in response to the new scenario that has emerged after two years of great complexity in the macroeconomic environment, it is necessary to open a stage that responds to the challenges of the future with a renewed team and professionals specialized in the different areas that encompasses the Group.
Del Pozo, who was renewed as CEO of the group until 2027 at the shareholders’ meeting last January, became CEO of El Corte Inglés in October 2017, as head of the department store business, along with Nuño de la Rosa, who was then entrusted with the corporate areas and the group’s subsidiaries.
After the dismissal as president, in the summer of 2018, of Dimas Gimeno, nephew of the late Isidoro Álvarez and confronted with his cousins, Marta and Cristina Álvarez, Nuño De la Rosa was appointed president of the company, a position in which he was for close to of a year, from the departure of Gimeno until the election as president of Marta Álvarez in July 2019. De la Rosa would end up leaving El Corte Inglés at the beginning of 2020. Since then, Víctor del Pozo was the only executive of the company.
The Delegate Executive Committee that the group has created after the departure of its hitherto top executive joins the three existing Board committees: the Audit and Control Committee, the Appointments and Remuneration Committee, and the Sustainability Committee.
José María Folache González-Parrado, who has extensive experience in the retail sector, worked for four years (2009-2012) as the Group’s Purchasing Manager during the period chaired by Isidoro Álvarez. “He has been vice president and CEO of Carrefour, and CEO of Tous, Parfois and Suárez Jewelry,” says the note.
For his part, Santiago Bau Arrechea has a degree in E-3 from ICADE, a degree in Political Science and Sociology from UNED, and an MBA from Harvard University, and until today he worked as a senior executive at the Goldman Sachs business bank, a company in which he has remained for more than 15 years. He “has extensive experience in financial management and investment banking.”
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