Premier Inn’s FTSE 100 owner is preparing for its chief executive to step down after seven years, with the finance director of advertising giant WPP among early contenders to replace her.
Whitbread has begun working with headhunters at Spencer Stuart on succession planning for Alison Brittain, The Sunday Times can reveal. Brittain, 57, has reshaped the leisure group since joining in 2015, selling the Costa Coffee chain for a knockout price to Coca-Cola and taking Premier Inn into Germany.
She has steered Whitbread through Covid lockdowns that saw its hotels and bars forced to close for swathes of 2020 and 2021, and in January was able to report that sales in the quarter to November 25 were 5.5 per cent ahead of 2019 levels.
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