The executive board of the Adidas Group has been reshuffled with two new members announced last week, adding up to three appointments and two departures after Kasper Rorsted's arrival as chief executive in October. The changes have entailed the appointment of a new managing director for the Adidas Group in Western Europe, and another change in Emerging Markets.
Gil Steyaert, who has led the robust rise of the Adidas brand in Western Europe in recent years, joined the executive board as an ordinary member on May 12. He is due to become board member in charge of the group's global operations from the start of October at the latest. He will take over from Glenn Bennett, who has been with Adidas for more than two decades as a steady member of the team led by Herbert Hainer, the group's former chief executive.
Steyaert has been with the Adidas group for many years, with assignments including the joint leadership of Adidas France and the management of a former regional unit comprising the U.K., Ireland, the Benelux and Nordic countries. In this function, he supervised the Adidas brand's partnership with the organizers of the London Olympics. The 54 year-old Frenchman has been managing director of Western Europe since 2013, implementing a strategy of harmonization and sharper focus on key accounts that has led to remarkable growth in the last three years.
Steyaert's function in Western Europe is to be taken over from the start of October by Alain Pourcelot, a 51 year-old Frenchman who led the Adidas organization in France for three years until 2015 and then became senior vice president of the group's direct-to-consumer business in Western Europe. A former French national champion in swimming, Pourcelot joined Adidas in 2005 as marketing director for Adidas France.
The second new board member is Karen Parkin, who has been head of human relations since November 2014. The 52 year-old British and American manager has been with the group since 1997 as sales director for Adidas in the U.K. She later moved to Portland to rise through the ranks in business development and supply chain management.
The departing board member, Bennett, is a former Reebok manager who switched to Adidas in 1993 and became a member of its executive board four years later. The 54 year-old American told the supervisory board he did not intend to renew his contract beyond March 2018, and he has agreed to relinquish his functions by the end of September in order to ensure a smooth transition. He was lauded for adjusting and managing the group's operations to deal with the transformation of the global supply chain in the last two decades.
Bennett is the second member of Hainer's board to leave the group. It was already announced in March that Robin Stalker was stepping down as board member with immediate effect and as chief financial officer (CFO) from May 12. The 59 year-old manager from New Zealand had been CFO since 2001, contributing to a growth spurt that saw Adidas sales more than triple and earnings multiply more than five-fold. Like Bennett, he had informed the board he would not be staying after the end of his contract in March 2018 and agreed to leave earlier for an orderly transition. His two functions were taken over by Harm Ohlmeyer, a 49 year-old German who has been with the group since 1998, mostly in finance and sales, and most recently dealing with digital sales.
Roland Auschel and Eric Liedtke, who were the two most recently appointed members of the Adidas board under Hainer, remain in place. They had both been touted as potential chief executives when the supervisory board started searching for a replacement.
Rorsted said the group has installed a group of 20 top managers and the next layer of 110 managers to drive the implementatin of its five-year strategic plan, Creating the New, . With the board reshuffle, Rorsted told shareholders at their annual meeting in Erlangen on May 10, that the board was ideally set up with an experienced, international and diverse team.
Parkin's appointment fits with several of Rorsted's declared priorities. He made it clear in March that he wanted human relations to be involved in key strategic decisions, and that he wanted to raise the number of women in leading executive functions. He told shareholders that about half of Adidas employees are women but only two of the group's top layer of 24 management functions are filled by women, and 22 percent of the extended leadership group consists of female managers. He wants to increase the share of women in global management positions to 32 percent, up from 29.5 percent at the end of 2016. He added that this has become a bonus-relevant target for himself and other board members.
The second regional management appointment is unrelated to the board changes. It pertains to the function of managing director for Emerging Markets, which has been given to Martin Shankland. The 45 year-old Australian, the group's long-time managing director in Russia and the former CIS countries, will switch to Emerging Markets at the start of October, taking over from Osman Ayaz, who has decided to retire at the end of this year.
Shankland will report directly to Auschel. He led the Adidas group's gutsy strategy to expand in Russia by rapidly opening its own stores, at a time when the market appeared risky. Strongly supported by Hainer, the bet paid off and it gave the Adidas brand a major head start over other sports brands in the Russian market, while delivering juicy margins. However, the exposure also caused some headaches when the market started to deteriorate in recent years, leading to store closures. The Adidas group prided itself with the appointment of internal candidates for both of the managing directors' functions.
