This morning brought news from three very different retailers, all united by a common, somewhat reassuring thread.

Carpetright and Debenhams both reported disappointing results this morning while we exclusively revealed that New Look has appointed former Zara Basic product boss Paula Dumont Lopez as its chief customer officer.

The three businesses are as disparate as retailers can be but they all have one thing in common: a man with a plan at the helm.

Carpetright’s Wilf Walsh, hit by plummeting profits, is in the midst of refashioning stores and upping customer service in an effort to turn things around.

Meanwhile, Debenhams’ Sergio Bucher is in the beginning stages of making Debenhams “Destination, Digital and Different”.

And New Look’s Anders Kristiansen has hired Dumont Lopez for her product knowledge – improving the retailer’s trend authority is key to his plan to improve performance. 

Elsewhere today, Tesco is taking aim at Amazon with one-hour delivery and Google has been fined over its Shopping service.

Quote of the day

“There is always something that happens that affects business but we are focused on delivering our strategy, as that’s something we can control”

– Debenhams boss Sergio Bucher on the uncertain economic and political climate

Today in numbers

93%

The fall in Carpetright’s statutory pre-tax profit

£2.1bn

The size of Google’s fine from the European Commission after it promoted its own shopping comparison service at the top of search results

Tomorrow’s agenda

Tomorrow brings Dixons Carphone preliminaries – look out for news and analysis from us on Seb James’ pioneering efforts.

 Becky Waller-Davies, reporter

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