Kingfisher plc, the home improvement group that owns B and Q and Screwfix, has named Sebastian Gundel as its chief executive designate. The announcement was made on 13 October 2026.
Gundel joins the board and takes the chief executive role on the first of February next year. He arrives from OBI, the German home improvement retailer, where he has been chief executive.
A gap at the top, and a bridge across it
The timetable leaves a month without a permanent chief executive. Thierry Garnier steps down at the end of December after leading the group since 2019. Bhavesh Mistry, the chief financial officer, covers as interim chief executive through January until Gundel starts.
That is a deliberate sequence rather than a gap left by accident. Naming the successor and the interim at the same time removes the uncertainty that usually follows a chief executive departure, and it tells investors the board had the replacement in hand before it announced the exit.
A home improvement specialist, not a generalist retailer
The choice is notable for how closely it matches the business. Gundel has spent his career inside home improvement retail rather than arriving from the wider grocery or general merchandise sector. He joined OBI in 2012 and worked up through the group, leading its innovation hub, running Austria as country manager, and serving as chief customer and digital officer before taking the chief executive role. He holds a doctorate from the University of Munster.
Kingfisher and OBI compete in the same European category and face the same structural questions: how much of a trade and professional customer base to build, how far to push own brand, and how to make a store estate built for weekend shoppers work for tradespeople who buy on weekdays and want to collect in minutes. A chief executive who has been answering those questions from the other side of the market arrives with a view of Kingfisher's position formed from outside it.
What the incoming chief executive inherits
Gundel takes over a group whose two strongest assets pull in different directions. Screwfix has grown by serving trade customers at speed through a dense network of small outlets, while B and Q remains a large-format retailer oriented to consumers. The strategic question of how much capital each deserves, and whether the group's French and Polish operations earn the same claim, is the one that will define his tenure.
The February start date gives him roughly three months of notice in which Kingfisher's current leadership continues to set the agenda. The practical effect is that his first substantive decisions will land against a plan he did not write, which is the normal condition of an incoming chief executive and the usual source of the first visible change in direction.
