The departing boss of insurer Direct Line and the outgoing chief executive of travel retailer SSP are in the running to succeed Sir Charlie Mayfield as chairman of the John Lewis Partnership.
Paul Geddes and Kate Swann are among external candidates for one of retail’s most high-profile roles, The Sunday Times can reveal.
The internal favourite is finance chief Patrick Lewis, whose great-grandfather founded the company in 1864 — though sources close to the process expect an outsider to be appointed for the first time in John Lewis’s history, given the scale of its challenges.
