Fortnum & Mason appoints chief executive officer

Mr Athron will join the business on 1 December allowing for a month’s handover from Ewan Venters, who leaves Fortnum & Mason in January 2021.

An experienced retail executive, Mr Athron joins Fortnum & Mason from MATCHESFASHION.com, a global fashion retailer for luxury brands, where he has served as chief operating officer since May 2018. As COO he was responsible for scaling the British business globally, and leading the eCommerce, logistics, customer experience and studio teams.

Mr Athron has spent a large amount of his career at the John Lewis Partnership after working in structured finance and strategic consulting. During his 12 years at JLP, he held a variety of roles, including strategic, finance and operational roles, the most recent of which was as group development director having also been trading director for John Lewis and chief financial officer of Waitrose. Mr Athron also founded JLP Ventures, the innovation unit set up to identify and drive new growth opportunities and creative partnerships across the group’s operations.

Kate Hobhouse, chairman of Fortnum & Mason, said: “The board and I are delighted that Tom has agreed to join Fortnum’s. A versatile and highly experienced business leader, Tom has extensive leadership experience in digital and physical retail across food, luxury and designer fashion: he is a great fit with the multichannel business that Fortnum’s has become.”