Public limited company | |
Traded as | : |
Industry | Retail |
Founded | 1884 Leeds, United Kingdom |
Founder |
Sir Michael Marks Thomas Spencer |
Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
Area served
|
Worldwide |
Key people
|
Robert Swannell (Chairman) Steve Rowe (CEO) |
Revenue | £10,555.4 million (2016) |
£784.9 million (2016) | |
Profit | £404.4 million (2016) |
Number of employees
|
82,904 (2017) |
Website | marksandspencer |
Marks and Spencer plc (also known as M&S) is a major British multinational retailer headquartered in the City of Westminster, London. It is listed on the and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
It specialises in the selling of clothing, home products and luxury food products. M&S was founded in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer in Leeds. The company also began to sell branded goods like Kellogg's Corn Flakes in November 2008. M&S currently has 959 stores across the U.K including 615 that only sell food products.
In 1998, the company became the first British retailer to make a pre-tax profit of over £1 billion, although subsequently it went into a sudden slump, which took the company, its shareholders, who included hundreds of thousands of small investors, and nearly all retail analysts and business journalists, by surprise. In November 2009, it was announced that Marc Bolland, formerly of Morrisons, would take over as chief executive from executive chairman Stuart Rose in early 2010; Rose remained in the role of non-executive chairman until he was replaced by Robert Swannell in January 2011.
M&S have 959 stores throughout the UK, as well as many international stores; 52 stores in India, 48 stores in Turkey, 37 in Russia, 27 in Greece, 17 in Ireland, 14 in France, 11 in Poland, 6 in Hungary and Finland and 5 in Spain.
In recent years its clothing sales have fallen whilst food sales have increased after the axing of "St. Michael's" naming for their own brand.