Nearly two weeks ago, struggling value giant B&M announced it had appointed Tjeerd Jegen as its next chief executive.
Jegen will take up his new role in mid-June, replacing interim chief executive Mike Schmidt who has been handling the role alongside his day-to-day job as the business’ chief financial officer since Alex Russo stepped down suddenly.
B&M chair Tiffany Hall said that Jegen was the most qualified candidate in a strong list of applicants for the vacant job.
“I am delighted to welcome Tjeerd to B&M. He is a highly talented international business leader with in-depth retail experience gained in Europe, Asia, and Australasia across the grocery, general merchandise and value sectors.
“In what was a rigorous recruitment process, Tjeerd stood out from a strong list of candidates due to his strategic insight, customer-centric approach, and strong track record of driving growth and transformation.”
Jegen’s appointment marks the end of a tricky period for B&M, having previously enjoyed a 20-plus-year period of nearly endless growth under the previous ownership of Simon and Bobby Arora, the entrepreneurial brothers who bought the business in 2005.
At the time, the chain was a regularly loss-making outfit with approximately 20 stores. By the time the Aroras stepped away in 2022, B&M was a FTSE 100-listed powerhouse with over 1,100 stores across the UK and France with a market cap in excess of many household retail brands like Marks & Spencer.
However, Alex Russo, the man who replaced Simon Arora as chief executive in 2022, failed to get out from under the shadow of the brothers and the brand has struggled since. B&M issued a profit warning in February 2025, and like-for-like sales in the UK have been falling.
Speaking to those who know him, Retail Week looks at what kind of a leader Jegen is, what he will bring to the role and what he needs to do to get the value giant back and firing again on all cylinders.
Haven’t you Tjeerd?
The Dutchman is a well-known quantity in European and international retail, even if he is perhaps slightly less well known in the UK. So, what sort of leader is he?
“Tjeerd has got very strong, mainland European credentials,” says founder and managing director of Retail Expertise, Michael Poyner. “He’s worked in many different countries in many different roles across many different retail categories”.
Clarity managing partner Fran Minogue agrees. “He’s certainly got a very broad retailing background,” she says. Looking at his CV, it’s hard not to agree.
Jegen began his retail career in the late 1990s with Dutch grocery giant Albert Heijn as a trainee program graduate. After five years, he moved to Ahold Delhaize (before the former acquired the latter) to head up its Czech and Polish businesses.
After a two-year stint with Metro Group in Romania, he then spent a year as the chief operating officer of Tesco Lotus, the UK supermarket giant’s Thai arm. Before he went on to spend another year as the chief executive of Tesco Malaysia.
Jegen’s globetrotting retail career then led him to four years as the managing director and chief executive of Supermarkets and Petrol at Woolworths – Australia’s largest supermarket chain.
He returned to Europe and his native Holland in the mid-2010s and spent over six years as the chief executive of beloved value retailer Hema. More recently, he spent nearly 18 months as the boss of German discount fashion brand Takko, before taking up the role of chief executive of Accell Group – Europe’s “market leader in e-bikes” and bicycle parts and accessories—in 2023.
“He has shown himself to be the kind of person who will roll up his sleeves and get stuck into difficult situations,” Minogue adds. “Which I think is one of the reasons why the B&M gig will be so interesting for him—because, frankly, he’s inheriting a bit of a mess.”
In his own words
In a LinkedIn post last week, Jegen said he was “truly excited” to be joining B&M, before going on to sketch out at least some insights into how he’ll be approaching his new role at one of the UK’s largest value retailers.
“B&M is a great business, serving millions of customers through a growing network of over 1,200 stores and supported by more than 40,000 dedicated colleagues. With sales approaching £6bn, it’s a company with real scale and a clear purpose: helping people make their money go further with big brands at big savings.
“What really drew me to B&M is its strong culture and the opportunity to make a meaningful difference in customers’ everyday lives. I’m also delighted to be returning to the retail sector; a fast-paced, customer-focused world I’ve always felt at home in.
“My wife and I will be relocating to the UK in the coming months, and we’re both looking forward to this new chapter. I’m very proud to take on this role and can’t wait to work with the teams across the business, as well as our valued supply partners and landlords, who play such a vital role in our ongoing growth.”
Dutch courage
Both Retail Expertise’s Poynor and Clarity’s Minogue characterise Jegen as a person and a retail leader who isn’t afraid of tough challenges and whose career has often been marked by making brave decisions.
The UK will be just another step on his retailing world tour and, Poynor says, while it has a reputation as one of the most fiercely competitive markets in the world, that won’t faze Jegen either.
“Tjeerd’s English is excellent, as you would expect,” he adds. “While he’s not got much, if any UK market experience, he’s not going to be fearful of strong value retail competition in his new role.
“He was, after all, the chief executive of Hema for six years, and so every day there was spent competing with Action, who are a very strong, domestic competitor right on the doorstep, which made life extremely difficult.”
Poynor says that Jegen will also have experienced dealing with the likes of Aldi and Lidl “who are also very strong in the Netherlands” and will likely see an opportunity for B&M with the recent struggles of UK competitors such as Poundland and even Home Bargains.
“The only thing he doesn’t really know ahead of time is what it’s like working as the chief executive of a listed company,” Poynor adds. “That will be new territory for him, but he’s certainly smart enough to be able to graph what those differences are.
“I think since the Arora’s, B&M may have lost all of those wonderful sourcing contacts the two of them had”
Fran Minogue, managing partner, Clarity
“Lots of people who do have that experience find the obligations of quarterly reporting and so on to be unwelcome, for obvious reasons. But I don’t think it’ll phase him.”
Clarity’s Minogue says that Jegen’s first order of business as chief executive will be to try and repair a lot of the sourcing and supplier relationships that have eroded at B&M since the Arora’s stepped back.
“I think since the Arora’s, B&M may have lost all of those wonderful sourcing contacts the two of them had,” she says. “If that’s the case, then that’s certainly something that Tjeerd is going to have to get back to, because B&M used to have a fabulous sourcing model.”
Poynor also says that Jegen’s “great strength is people”.
“He’s very inspirational with store colleagues and he cares a lot about them,” he adds. “And about the interrelationship between colleagues and customers. From what I understand, this will be a very marked change from the more recent culture within the business.”
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