Founders bale out of Moss Bros

Moss Bros has reshuffled its board and revealed that the Gee family, one of its founding families, has all but sold its stake in the retail group.

The branded suit retailer has promoted Ciaran McCloskey on to the main board as group trading dir-ector and appointed Brian Brick, the former boss of menswear rival Speciality Retail Group, as an independent non-executive director from 1 September.

The retail group had planned to restructure its board late last year but this was delayed by the protracted takeover bid by the Icelandic investment group Baugur, which owns 28.5 per cent of Moss Bros, that collapsed in May.

David Adams, who was appointed Moss Bros non-executive chairman last month, has accelerated the process. Rowland Gee has resigned as a non-executive director from the Moss Bros board with effect from 22 February 2009. Mr Gee and his brothers now hold a combined stake of just 0.5 per cent.

The founding Moss family still retain a combined 17 per cent stake in Moss Bros. Robert Marsh, who joined the Moss Bros board in May 2006, is retiring with immediate effect.

Moss Bros has also appointed Altium Capital as its corporate brokers and Barclays Bank as its group banker.