Harrods scandal fallout hits Fenwick’s new CEO appointment

Fenwick has announced that its planned new CEO, who’d been due to take up the post imminently, won’t now be joining as the fallout from the Harrods sex abuse scandal continues.

Nigel Blow was a long-serving Harrods exec and has decided not to take up the top job at Fenwick.

Blow worked at Harrods from 1992 to 2007 so was there when Mohammed Fayed owned the business. He rose to become chief merchant in 2003 and sat on the board.

He left Harrods in 2007 to join Brown Thomas and in 2013 became MD of the Fayed-owned Turnbull and Asser.

That was during a period when it’s claimed that Fayed sexually abused a number of young women who worked for the store.

There’s been no suggestion that Blow knew about this but he hasn’t made any comment on the issue and the BBC, which broke the story last month, has been told on contacting Fenwick that he’d now declined to take up the chief executive’s post there.

It’s perhaps an understandable decision to have made. Scandals such as the one at Harrods can have a negative impact on the careers of anyone who was there at the time, particularly those in prominent positions, and can generate negative attitudes to the companies they later work for.

Newcastle-based Fenwick has eight UK stores having closed its New Bond Street flagship this year.

Blow has been CEO privately-owned department store chain Morleys since 2019 and the company hasn’t commented on whether he’ll now be staying in that role.

Harrods MD Michael Ward last week last week expressed his horror at the allegations and said he didn’t know of any abuse. 

And former Harrods CEO James McArthur who ran the business for 10 months in 2008, also denied any awareness but described his time there as “unpleasant, calling Fayed “abhorrent”.

The BBC has been contacting as many former directors of Harrods as possible to ask what they knew about the issues. Former executive Andre Maeder said he was “horrified” at the broadcaster’s documentary about the abuse but also said he “never saw or heard anything” relating to the allegations. 

Maeder was recently announced as the new chief executive of Selfridges.