Our Leadership

Stuart Machin

Chief Executive Officer

Stuart took over as Chief Executive Officer in May 2022. Having joined M&S as Food Managing Director in April 2018 with 30 years experience across food, fashion and home retail sector. Prior to his appointment as CEO, Stuart was joint Chief Operating Officer where in addition to leading M&S Food he also took responsibility for property and store development, store operations, HR and IT. Stuart is also a director of Ocado Retail Limited.

Prior to M&S, Stuart held senior operations and commercial roles across the UK and internationally, starting his career in Sainsbury’s and British Home stores, Tesco and then Asda. Stuart spent 10 years in Australia as part of Wesfarmers as COO and CEO of Coles supermarkets and Target department stores respectively. Returning to the UK he was briefly CEO of home retailer and manufacturer Steinhoff UK. 

Stuart has extensive experience of retail transformation and a deep understanding of operations, trading, marketing and online.

Stuart attended the three-month residential HARVARD AMP program in 2013 and the Harvard chief executive officer program in 2023. 

Follow Stuart on Twitter here.

Jeremy Townsend

Chief Financial Officer

Jeremy joined M&S as CFO on the 22nd November 2022 and brings a wealth of financial leadership experience. Jeremy has held senior financial and non-executive roles across several public companies and most recently, was the Group CFO Rentokil Initial Plc.

Jeremy is currently a non-executive director at NHS England and is the Chair of the Audit & Risk Assurance Committee there. He also spent seven years in senior leadership roles at Sainsbury's and served as a Non-Executive Director of Morrison's PLC.

Alex Freudmann

Managing Director of Food

Alex joined M&S in November 2022 from Australia’s pre-eminent beer, wine and spirits retailer, Dan Murphy’s, where he held the role of Managing Director. Dan Murphy's is the leading part of Endeavour Group's Retail offering and was a key contributor to Endeavour's successful performance during Alex's tenure.

Alex has a wealth of experience having worked in food retailing for nearly two decades. Alex began his career in the dotcom sector and then moved to Tesco as a leader in its Telecoms business. Alex developed his career at Tesco through the commercial functions, before moving to Australia to work at Coles, one of the country's leading supermarkets. Whilst at Coles he successfully led Health, Beauty & Baby, Packaged Grocery and Fresh Foods. As Fresh Foods Director he led an ambitious growth strategy through improving the product proposition, developing new categories, introducing new store formats, and launching a successful Food2Go business.

Richard Price

Managing Director of Clothing & Home

Richard joined M&S on 7 July 2020 as Clothing & Home Managing Director.

Richard has over 30 years’ experience with the UK’s three biggest clothing retailers. He joined Next in 1989 as a Merchandise Manager in Menswear moving through the ranks delivering consistent growth and profit, he planned the structure and architecture for the range, implemented new improvements to merchandising systems and was deputised as Product Director.

In 2005, Richard joined M&S as Head of Merchandise across Women’s Formalwear, Footwear and Accessories, responsible for delivering sales, margin and profit within the category. He was a key member of the leadership team driving and shaping the overall Womenswear offer across the business. Three years later, Richard was promoted to Menswear Trading Director, responsible for a £1bn turnover business, a large team, sales plans, product strategy, marketing and customer journey. In October 2012, he joined BHS as Managing Director responsible for all trading departments and stores, ecommerce, finance and property.

Richard was hired as CEO of F&F Clothing in 2015, a stand-alone business within Tesco with a turnover of £1,7bn. Richard had a team of over 500 and focused the brand to have more fashionability as well as quality. After five years at Tesco, the opportunity arose for Richard to re-join M&S where he currently serves as a key member of the leadership team.

Since Richard has returned to M&S he has overseen a market share growth across all categories and improved customer perceptions of style, quality and value, established the brand platform Anything but Ordinary and launched Brands at M&S – the retailer’s third party brand platform – which is now home to more than 100 brands.  

Sacha Berendji

Operations Director

Sacha joined M&S in 1994 through the Graduate training programme and undertook various Retail appointments across the country including General Manager of Marble Arch Store and Regional Manager for London.

In 2007 Sacha joined the Property Group as Head of Property Planning & Store Development where he was responsible for both new space development and the store modernisation programme, before being appointed Executive Assistant to the Chief Executive in 2009.

Following this Sacha joined the General Merchandise division as Director of Merchandising before taking up his current position of Retail, Operations & Property Director in November 2012.

Sacha is currently Operations Director, looking after stores and store operations, property and store development for UK and Ireland. 

In February 2023, Sacha joined the Board at Adnams plc as a Non-Executive Director. He is also a member of the Remuneration and Audit Committees at Adnams.

Nick Folland

General Counsel & Company Secretary

Nick has extensive legal and governance experience, having been General Counsel and Company Secretary in FTSE 100 businesses since 2001; originally qualifying as a solicitor at Linklaters & Paines in 1993. He is a founder and honorary life member of the industry body, the GC100.

Nick is a Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee of the Board of Defence Equipment and Support, an ALB of the Ministry of Defence. He is also a member of the NERC/BAS Operations and Safety Assurance Group, having previously been the Senior Independent Member and Audit Committee Chair of the Natural Environment Research Council. He is Chair of the Remuneration Committee of Ocado Retail Limited and in May 2024, concluded his role as a Non-Executive Director on the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee of HMPPS.

Nick joined the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as Non-Executive Director and member of the Audit Committee on 1 June 2024.

Previously Nick was also Chief Executive of the Crown Prosecution Service in 2016 & 2017, a role where he also led a £300 million cross-government IT change programme reforming the criminal justice system. Prior to that, he was Chief of Staff to the Chief Executive Officer and Chief External Affairs Officer of the Co-op, playing a pivotal role in saving the Co-op Bank and rescuing the group from its existential crisis and then reforming the organisation's governance.

Nick joined the Co-op from B&Q’s owner, Kingfisher plc, where he was a member of the retail board and held a number of executive positions over the period 2007-13. He led the development of the sustainability strategy 'Net Positive' and was responsible for the Group's government affairs programme.

Rachel Higham

Chief Digital and Technology Officer

Rachel joined M&S in June 2024, having previously held the role of Chief Information Officer at WPP.

Prior to joining WPP, Rachel was Managing Director for IT at BT Group and Managing Director for Asia in BT’s Technology division. She has held senior digital and technology roles at Vodafone, ACE Group and in the banking sector.

Victoria McKenzie-Gould

Corporate Affairs Director

Victoria McKenzie-Gould has been a part of Marks & Spencer’s leadership team as Corporate Affairs Director since 2019, heading-up Colleague Communications, External Communications, Public Affairs and Sustainability. She is also the Executive Sponsor for Inclusion & Diversity across the business.

Victoria worked for Rt Hon Sir Tony Blair for seven years; initially as a Special Advisor at 10 Downing Street and then as a Senior Advisor after standing down as Prime Minister. Following this, she served as Group Government Affairs Director at Tesco and Corporate Affairs Director at Britvic.

Victoria is also a Non-Executive Director for Allwyn UK and a member of the Advisory Board for her alma mater, University of Liverpool Management School.

Sarah Findlater

People Director

Sarah has been People Director since March 2022. She joined Marks & Spencer in 1998 through the HR Graduate programme and undertook HR Business Partner roles in stores and regions across the country, before joining our Support Centre in 2010 as Head of HR Strategy Planning. In 2011 she became Head of Employee Relations, Engagement and Planning, and in 2014 was promoted to Head of Organisational Development where she had global accountability for Talent, Learning and Development. Sarah led the people agenda for our Clothing & Home business for three years, before moving to business partner the Chief Operating Officer in 2020, taking on accountability for our 50,000 colleagues in Retail Operations in addition to Group Talent, Reward and Wellbeing and the HR Systems Transformation Programme. 

Sarah sits on the Princes Trust Retail Leadership Group and is G20 EMPOWER alliance advocate, a Private Sector Alliance for the Empowerment and Progression of Women’s Economic Representation (EMPOWER).