Here’s A CEO Who Was Happy To Lose His Job

After more than a year as both creative director and chief executive officer of Burberry Group Plc, Christopher Bailey was tired of the juggling act. So in the autumn of 2015 he asked the board to let him hire someone to assist in running the business. He soon realized he didn’t just need a helping hand. He wanted someone to take over as CEO. A few months later, Bailey met with Marco Gobbetti, CEO of Celine, a label owned by luxury conglomerate LVMH whose sales have boomed on the back of its cult handbags. They met in London for what was scheduled to be simply breakfast and ended up talking for hours about Burberry’s future. Gobbetti—a cheerful 57-year-old Italian—soon agreed to take over as Burberry’s CEO, leaving Bailey, 46, to concentrate on design. “We will work hand in hand,” Bailey told Bloomberg TV when Gobbetti’s appointment was announced last summer. “It wasn’t a big decision for me whether I had a CEO title or not.” Read more at Bloomberg.