Respected Poundland CEO to retire

Kevin O'Byrne, the former boss of home improvement retailer B&Q, is to take over at Poundland

'‹'‹Discount retailer Poundland said '‹chief '‹e'‹xecutive Jim McCarthy will retire in September after a decade in the job and be succeeded by Kevin O'Byrne, the former boss of home improvement retailer B&Q.

Poundland said Mr O'Byrne will join the board as chief executive designate on April 4 and become CEO on July 1.

Mr McCarthy, who led Poundland's flotation on the London Stock Exchange in 2014, will remain available to the board until his retirement at the firm's annual shareholder meeting in September.

Analyst Clive Black at Shore Capital said: "Whilst replacing Mr McCarthy was never going to be an easy task as he is a tough act to follow for sure, we have also to express our pleasure and praise for chairman Darren Shapland in engineering a pretty seamless change in the top position in the firm in our view with the announcement to of a very strong replacement."