New Burberry CEO faces 6-month wait to take his coat off
Contract prevents Marco Gobbetti diving straight in at top of fashion group
Burberry’s incoming chief executive Marco Gobbetti will spend his first six months working within the luxury marque’s Asia-Pacific business because he has contractual commitments that bar him from an immediate start in the top spot.
The British trenchcoat maker announced last year that it was tapping Mr Gobbetti, formerly Céline chief executive, in a move that investors said would bring welcome business heft to a company that had been criticised for appointing Christopher Bailey to the dual role of chief creative and chief executive officer.
Mr Gobbetti will arrive at Burberry a week on Friday. However, he will have to wait six months before taking up his full responsibilities and a seat on the luxury marque’s board. His initial role will be limited to Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, where he will supplement existing management teams, who will still report to Mr Bailey.
Burberry had previously said that Mr Gobbetti would “join the board upon arrival from a date in 2017 as soon as he is contractually able to do so”. A person briefed on the arrangements said Asia-Pacific arrangement allows Mr Gobbetti to start sooner, while honouring contractual commitments that impose time-limited constraints on where he can work and in what capacity.
Burberry declined to comment. LVMH, the luxury conglomerate that is the parent company of Céline, did not immediately clarify what undertakings it had received from Mr Gobbetti, or whether it had been asked to waive any of them.
Mr Bailey, a designer by training, is widely credited with injecting creativity and class into the Burberry brand at a time when it was tarnished by association with football hooligans. But some investors had expressed doubts over whether he had the expertise to tackle commercial challenges such as the tightening purse-strings of luxury consumers in China and the decline of North American department stores.
In contrast, Mr Gobbetti holds a degree in business administration from American University in Washington and has spent 20 years running high-end fashion brands. He was chief executive of Moschino from 1993 to 2004, the quirky Italian fashion brand known for “fun fashion”, and then became chief executive of LVMH-owned fashion house Givenchy. He has also been commercial director at Italian luxury goods house Bottega Veneta.
Both men will report to chairman Sir John Peace, and Mr Bailey will receive an annual “allowance” that means he will be paid more as “president” than Mr Gobbetti receives as chief executive. Burberry declined to say how much Mr Gobbetti would receive in his first six months.
The arrangements contrast with those at most other luxury groups, where the chief designer is generally paid less than the chief executive, to whom they usually report.