Richard Baker, the former Boots chief executive, is making a surprise comeback to the City by joining Whitbread, the Costa Coffee to Premier Inn owner, as a non-executive director.
The leisure group, which fell out of the FTSE 100 earlier this year, will announce Mr Baker's appointment along with its latest trading numbers to the City this week.
Baker has remained out of the publicly quoted sector since he left Boots with a multi-million pound payoff in 2007. The former retailer who joined Advent International, the private equity group, as an adviser last month, but this will be his most high-profile appointment since Boots.
The former retail chief is also a non-executive chairman of Virgin Active, the health club part-owned by Sir Richard Branson.
Baker's appointment at Whitbread is likely to provoke speculation that he could be being lined up as a future successor to Alan Parker, the leisure group's chief executive.
Whitbread declined to comment.
The Sunday Telegraph, business p1
