Stuart Rose to leave M&S slowly after Bolland joins

Marks & Spencer's chairman, Sir Stuart Rose, will not step back to a part-time non-executive role when the new chief executive, Marc Bolland, joins the company in May and does not intend to leave the retailer until after Christmas. Rose's decision to exit only gradually is likely to anger some City shareholders, who have had a fractious relationship with the M&S boss in recent years. It is understood that Rose intends to stay almost full-time at M&S for the first months Bolland is in charge in order to teach him about the clothing business. Bolland has no experience of retailing apart from in the food and drink sectors. After the summer Rose then plans to help his successor – hired from grocer WM Morrison on a potential £15m pay package – make a number of key strategy decisions. Only when that work is complete is he planning to downsize his job to a more normal non-executive chairman role. Rose hinted at his planned departure schedule today at a retail conference in London. He told the audience he would leave "probably a little earlier" than his latest possible leaving date of July 2011. He added: "I've done this job now longer than the second world war lasted. I am going to go at the appropriate time." M&S, he said, had not yet started the search for a new chairman. One leading candidate, however, has now ruled himself out. Sir David Michels, a non-executive director at the retailer, who had previously said he would like the job, now says he does not have time to take on the role. Rose's plan for a gradual wind-down may not be welcomed by institutional shareholders. Some believe he should depart sooner and some have already called for his £1.13m basic pay to be cut when Bolland arrives. The average pay for a non-executive chairman of a FTSE-100 company is around £500,000. Today Rose told the London conference that Bolland is "absolutely the right man" to lead M&S and predicted that the retailer will be revolutionised in the coming years. He said that M&S was likely to start selling new products and services, ranging from big-name cosmetic brands right through to broadband services. "Why not, if it is legal," he said. The M&S boss also forecast that the stores are in for big changes: "It may be you don't have racks of blouses. You might have a post office, a cafe, a place for online deliveries to be made. You'll still have an M&S store but it won't be a traditional M&S store."