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UK Brewer Whitbread Appoints Brittain Chief

UK Brewer Whitbread Appoints Brittain Chief

Whitbread, has named Alison Brittain as its new chief executive, succeeding Andy Harrison who confirmed his retirement last month.

Brittain, who is currently group director of Lloyds’ retail division, will join the company at the beginning of January 2016.

Prior to her current role at Lloyds, Brittain held senior roles at Santander UK and Barclays and is a non-executive director of Marks & Spencer.

Her leadership qualities displayed at Lloyds, which has around 35,000 employees and her digital experience gained there, were seen by Whitbread as strong credentials for the role.

Brittain is the first woman to hold a chief executive role at Whitbread and her appointment takes the number of female FTSE 100 bosses to six.

The other five are Veronique Laury at Kingfisher (owner of B&Q), Alison Cooper at Imperial Tobacco, Liv Garfield at Severn Trent ( which reported its year profits today ) , Carolyn McCall at Easyjet and Moya Green at Royal Mail.

The small number of women in top roles at UK blue chip companies has long been an issue of concern and well documented in the media.

To some extent at least progress has been made. In March this year the latest government report showed that almost a quarter of all FTSE 100 board positions are now being filled by women.

The report from Lord Davies of Abersoch showed that four years on from his original report, commissioned by the then business secretary Vince Cable, female representation has almost doubled to 23.5%.

The report also revealed that when the report was commissioned back in 2011 there were 21 FTSE 100 boards with no female representation. Now there are no all-male boards left, a statistic the government has been keen to stress.

However, while female presence in the board room shows a positive trajectory, the number of women actually at chief executive level remains low.

A point Fiona Hathon, managing director of Women On Boards highlighted when she spoke to Sky News following Brittain's appointment.

“I am heartened by the news that Alison has broken through the C-Suite glass ceiling and will soon be leading a FTSE 100 company.

"More women are breaking the boardroom glass ceiling but sadly the number of women at the top and or in line management positions is still only around 10% globally.”

This according to a recent study by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox.

Ms Hathon said UK companies needed to embrace gender targets as part of good business practice. “Gender targets work, they are needed and good managers never fear them.”

She pointed out that Ms Brittain currently works for Lloyds Bank who have recently set a female gender target of 40% for women in senior management positions by 2020.

“Lloyds Bank like many of the best companies today understand that losing talent has a negative effect on their business and profit. Therefore they are putting in place strategies to ensure that minority voices are heard and to ensure their talent does not leave to join a competitor."

She added: “Top companies today usually set specific gender targets to ensure that their line management know the talent behind them and promote accordingly. Lloyds Bank and partnerships like PwC recognise that what gets measured gets managed and what gets managed gets done.”