New boss for Wickes

Simon King is to be the new managing director of the British DIY chain Wickes. His most recent position was as chief operations officer at Asda, a retail group, from January to June 2011. Previous stations in his career were with the supermarket group Safeway (now Morrisons) and with Tesco. His predecessor Jeremy Bird is being promoted to director of the entire consumer business of Travis Perkins, the group that Wickes is part of. These personnel changes are to be seen in connection with a restructuring at Travis Perkins due to take effect on 1 January 2012. Then the consumer division will be joined by three others: general merchanting, specialist merchanting, and plumbing & heating.