Royal Mail appoints Heathrow executive as new CEO

Royal Mail has appointed a senior executive from Heathrow to become its next boss as parent company International Distribution Services looks to turn its fortunes around.

Emma Gilthorpe, the west London airport’s chief operating officer since 2020, will join Royal Mail in May, IDS said in a statement on Tuesday.

The job is a new post created under IDS boss Martin Seidenberg. The group’s parcels business, GLS, has a separate CEO, Karl Pfaff.

Seidenberg, who took on the Royal Mail job on an interim basis last July, will hold the reins until Gilthorpe joins.

Once in public ownership until the Conservative/LibDem coalition government decided to offload it in 2010, the company has struggled to keep pace with the reduction in letter volumes amid the rise in emails and courier companies grabbing a growing slice of the parcel market.

It has also been criticised for large delays in delivery times for mail and an antagonistic approach to industrial relations, which led to a wave of strikes last year over pay and conditions.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com