Kingfisher has completed the creation of its new international leadership team with the appointment of Emily Lawson as chief people officer from October.
Ms Lawson was previously group HR director at Wm Morrison Supermarkets and a partner at McKinsey & Co.

During her time at Morrisons she led HR programmes in the areas of business performance, talent, diversity, learning and development, cultural engagement and reward. During her 15 years at McKinsey she worked across sectors including pharmaceuticals, telecoms, banking and energy, responsible for the firm's work on talent and people management.

Commenting on Ms Lawson's appointment, Kingfisher ceo Véronique Laury said: "Her breadth of previous experience is ideally suited to the One Kingfisher plan to create a single, unified company where customer needs come first.

"Women account for around half our customers and make about three-quarters of home improvement decisions, and we recognise the importance of building a pipeline of management talent to reflect that trend.

"I'm therefore pleased to note that Emily's appointment brings the proportion of women on our seven-strong leadership team to over 50%."