Marta Alvarez leaves the presidency of El Corte Inglés. Today, the department store group’s board of directors approved his resignation from the position and agreed to appoint the person who will replace him in the position. This is none other than her sister Christina, as the company stated in a statement.
In it, El Corte Inglés explains that Marta Álvarez decided to leave her position “by a personal and voluntary decision.” Of course, the woman who has been president of the group since 2019 will not leave the board of directors, as she will continue to hold this position. He will also continue as a member of the Oversight Committee, managing its own brands, fashion and home area.
In less than a month, the distribution group, with an annual turnover of nearly 15,000 million euros, announced first the dismissal of its CEO Gaston Bottazzini, and now the replacement of its presidency. All this just three months after approving, at the shareholders’ meeting last July, its new strategic plan 2025-2030. At the same meeting, Marta Alvarez renewed her term for another five years. It only lasted four months.
For her part, Cristina Alvarez will be president in a non-executive capacity, a position she will assume next January 15, which the company defines as an “organized, stable and continuous” framework. His appointment was unanimously approved by the Group’s Board of Directors.
“With everyone’s efforts, we have achieved great results, allowing the company to face the future with guarantees, always with the customer at the center, and relying on the daily work of all the people who are part of our company,” says Marta Álvarez in the statement sent by El Corte Inglés.
In it, he says that the company has “a new management team ready to achieve the goals set in the 2025-2030 strategic plan.” He adds, “It is time to open a new phase in the presidency.”
Marta Alvarez arrived in this position in July 2019, replacing Jesús Nuño de la Rosa. She did so a year after deciding the battle that she and her sister Cristina, daughters of the historic president Isidoro Alvarez, had fought with their cousin and former president of the group, Dimas Jimeno. His appointment six years ago was understood as the end point of that internal war and the beginning of a period of greater stability.
This has been the case since he assumed the presidency, although executive changes have been constant in the past six years. Under Marta Álvarez’s tenure, El Corte Inglés had three different CEOs and an executive committee responsible for the day-to-day operations of the company. The first was Victor del Pozo, Jesús Nuño de la Rosa himself, who returned to this executive position after his presidency; and Gaston Bottazzini, who barely held his position for a little more than a year.
The above-mentioned strategic plan, presented at the meeting last July, which foresees investments worth €3,000 million until 2030, will now be developed without the CEO who designed it, Bottazzini himself, nor the president who endorsed it. On the other hand, it will be developed by a new President and Senior CEO, Santiago Pau, with the rank of General Manager.
“Cristina has the full support of the Board of Directors and the Control Committee to continue working in this company, to which I have devoted practically my entire professional life,” says Marta Alvarez. The sisters own 18.4% of El Corte Inglés’ capital through Cartera de Valores IASA, sharing shares with their uncle, Cesar Álvarez, brother of the historic president and father of the former president, Isidoro Álvarez.