{"id":137571,"date":"2025-11-13T13:03:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T13:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/137571\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T13:03:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T13:03:08","slug":"marks-spencer-appoints-irish-boss-of-ba-to-its-board-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/137571\/","title":{"rendered":"Marks & Spencer appoints Irish boss of BA to its board \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marks and Spencer<\/a> has appointed the boss of British Airways<\/a> to its board 18 months after the retailer\u2019s chair publicly hit out at what he saw as the airline\u2019s declining service.<\/p>\n

Sean Doyle will become a non-executive director on December 1 amid a push by M&S to win market share in its food and fashion businesses and boost profits.<\/p>\n

The retailer said Doyle \u201crepresents an iconic British brand with extraordinary public exposure\u201d.<\/p>\n

The appointment comes after Archie Norman complained on X in May 2024 that several of his BA flights had been cancelled, commenting that it was \u201csad to see a great airline deteriorate\u201d. The posts were later deleted.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Marks & Spencer notifies Irish data watchdog after cyber attackOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, in a light-hearted response to the X posts, Norman said: \u201cI\u2019m glad to say there has been an improvement in punctuality in the flights to Glasgow since that episode. Having Sean on our board means that I will not need to go through X to make my views known \u2014 and I\u2019m sure there\u2019s much we can learn from each other about customer service.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2017 BA started selling M&S food to economy passengers on short-haul flights after ending free meals before switching to Tom Kerridge products four years later.<\/p>\n

Doyle will join another heavyweight retailer, former Asda chief executive Roger Burnley, on the M&S board from next month.<\/p>\n

Doyle said heading up Britain\u2019s flag carrier was a \u201cvery special job\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009not many brands can equal that, but M&S certainly can\u201d.<\/p>\n

BA is owned by IAG, the FTSE 100 group that also owns Iberia and Aer Lingus \u2014 the airline Doyle previously ran.<\/p>\n

Norman, one of the UK\u2019s most respected retail leaders, and chief executive Stuart Machin have been credited with turning around M&S after years of decline. It has reorientated its food business to appeal to families as well as re-establishing its credentials as a clothing retailer, and is in a multiyear programme to renew many stores.M&S is also recovering from a cyber attack earlier this year that left it unable to sell clothes and furniture online for seven weeks. <\/p>\n

Last month Norman committed to remaining as chair until 2029, taking his term to 12 years \u2014 far beyond UK corporate government guidelines that recommend a chair should only serve for nine years. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marks and Spencer has appointed the boss of British Airways to its board 18 months after the retailer\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[37758,72,61,60,33160],"class_list":["post-137571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-british-airways","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-marks-spencer-ms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}