Rentokil Initial plc has appointed Phill Wood as Chief Executive of its newly formed International Division, effective immediately, the FTSE listed pest control and hygiene services group said on 13 August 2026.
The appointment forms part of a wider reorganisation of Rentokil Initial's operating structure into two divisions, North America and International. The International Division brings together Europe, the UK, Ireland and Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and MENAT, Latin America and the Pacific. The company said the new structure builds on its existing financial reporting arrangements and is intended to create clearer accountability for performance and execution across the group, while enabling faster adoption of best practices in customer experience, sales effectiveness and operational delivery.
Wood has been with Rentokil Initial since 2006 and has led businesses in Europe, the Caribbean, Africa and the UK during that time. He has led the company's UK, Ireland and Sub-Saharan Africa region since 2009, a responsibility he retains alongside his new international brief. For the past eighteen months he has also led the group's Marketing and Innovation function, where the company said he made progress on prioritising and delivering its innovation pipeline.
The reorganisation was announced alongside confirmation that Rafael Carrasco, who joined Rentokil Initial on 3 August 2026 as Chief Executive of the newly created North America Division, has taken up that post. Carrasco joined from WM, formerly known as Waste Management, Inc., where he was President of WM Healthcare Solutions and had previously served as Senior Vice President of Strategy, overseeing operations spanning more than 200 branches and over 10,000 employees across the United States, Canada, the UK, Ireland and Western Europe.
Rentokil Initial, which traces its origins to a pest control business founded in 1925, employs approximately 63,400 people in 90 countries and is listed on the London Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker RTO.
Mike Duffy, Chief Executive of Rentokil Initial, said the appointments were intended to strengthen the group's ability to deliver its strategic priorities of intensifying customer focus, improving sales and operational performance and simplifying the business. He said Wood's experience within the company's frontline operations, together with Carrasco's track record in route based service industries, would support the group's execution of its strategy.
Duffy said the group's focus was now on execution and on delivering the improved performance he believed the business was capable of, through better customer outcomes, growth and long term shareholder value creation.
