Cheshire speaks about successor and takeovers

In an interview with Bloomberg Television Kingfisher’s CEO Ian Cheshire, 53, named two potential successors and spoke about possible takeovers. Two internal candidates who are qualified in his view are Kevin O’Byrne, 48, currently CEO of the subsidiary B&Q, and Karen Witts, 50, currently finance director. Another possibility would be the return of Euan Sutherland, who was most recently CEO at Kingfisher and has just moved to the Co-Operative Group. Cheshire’s contract still has three years to run. During the interview the Kingfisher boss also went into the subject of the European DIY market and certain competitors. The troubled German Praktiker Group is going to be the “big European story”, in his words, because private equity companies are eying it up. Kingfisher itself is interested in 15 Praktiker stores in Poland. Cheshire also reckons that Baumax might well sell some stores in Turkey and Romania. In addition he indicated that outlets could be acquired from relatively small franchise groups in France.