Royal Mail has named Simon Thompson as its new UK chief executive.
Simon Thompson
“We need to develop a razor-sharp focus on the customer, making sure our services are delivering exactly what our customers need and want,” said Thompson, who replaces interim UK boss Stuart Simpson with immediate effect.
Parcel revenues surpassed those of letters for the first time in the group’s history last year, helped by the online boom in response to the pandemic. Royal Mail said that parcel revenues formed 60 per cent of its total revenue in its half-year results in November. This compared with 47 per cent in the previous period.
Keith Williams, who will revert from an executive chair to a non-executive chair position, said Royal Mail was in a period of “significant transition”. He said added that Thompson was “ideally placed to lead the opportunity to grow and expand our UK parcels business and to meet our customers’ needs across both letters and parcels”.
Thompson was most recently chief product officer at Ocado and had previously held posts at Apple, Wm Morrison Supermarkets and HSBC. “I look forward to working with our colleagues and stakeholders to take this great company forward,” he said.
Martin Seidenberg, chief executive of logistics group GLS, will join Royal Mail’s board from April, while Mick Jeavons, interim chief financial officer since May, will take on that post permanently, joining the board. Simpson will leave Royal Mail at the end of January following a brief handover period, having taken over as interim chief executive in May following the resignation of Rico Back.
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