US retail giant promotes Brits to CIO and COO roles

Best Buy, the American electronics retail giant that owns The Carphone Warehouse chain in Europe has promoted two leading British executives to the roles of CIO and chief operating officer (COO). Neville Roberts, a former Accenture consultant, will take over as CIO across the entire company and Scott Wheway, whose career includes chemists Boots, has become the COO.

Roberts joined Best Buy last January as CIO of the Best Buy International arm, whilst overall CIO responsibility was held by Robert Willett, who was CEO and CIO jointly. As CIO Roberts will report to Willett, who remains CEO.

Roberts, 41, was at Accenture for 18 years in its Global Retail Practice and was a leading expert on Oracle Retail. During his career with the consultancy he worked with Wal-Mart and its UK supermarket brand Asda, WHSmith, Argos and Tesco on projects such as supply chain, e-commerce, multi-channel delivery, CRM and outsourcing.

Scott Wheway joins Best Buy as COO from Alliance Boots where he was managing director. Prior to Boots Wheway was with supermarket chain Tesco for 20 years and he is also a non-executive director of insurance giants Aviva. Minneapolis based Best Buy, which has 155,000 employees in stores across the US, Canada, Mexico and Europe, said the changes in its management structure would “strengthen its information technology team worldwide and enhance its expanding international operations.”