Paul Pester and Peter Marks: The two key men who will be driving the Co-op’s future

By PERRY GOURLEY
Published on 20/07/2012 00:00

OXFORD physics graduate Paul Pester has been chief executive of Lloyds Project Verde business, the assets sold to the Co-op, since May 2011. He takes on a similar role in charge of the Co-op’s combined banking businesses.

Regarded as a specialist in integration, he began his career as a management consultant with companies including McKinsey before joining the financial services sector in 1999 as group chief executive of Virgin Money.

As managing director of Santander UK he later pulled together Bradford & Bingley with the Abbey and Alliance & Leicester businesses. Pester, 48, went on to become managing director of Lloyds TSB’s consumer banking arm before joining publisher Moneyfacts as chief executive and then returning to Lloyds. He is also a non-executive director at Visa and software group MicroFocus.

At the time of his appointment to head up Project Verde, Pester said he was “delighted to be in the position of shaping and growing a new business”.

A former competitive swimmer, he is actively involved in charity endurance sports events.

Peter Marks has worked in the co-ops movement all his life

PETER Marks has spent his entire working life in the

co-operative movement after joining the Yorkshire Co-op as a management trainee in its food division in 1967.

He went on to head-up a number of divisions including travel, department stores and human resources and in 2002 was appointed as chief executive of United Co-operatives following the merger of United Norwest and Yorkshire Co-operatives.

He took up his current role as chief executive of Co-operative Group in 2007 after its merger with United Co-operatives.

Named leader of the year

in 2009 in the National 

Business Awards, Bradford-born Marks was paid a salary of £970,000 last year and a £490,000 bonus. The 62-year-old plays the drums in a Rolling Stones cover band, Last Orders.

Announcing the Co-operative Group’s latest annual financial results in March, Marks said although he didn’t expect any significant recovery in the UK economy during 2012, he said the organisation was is “in better shape than ever before because of all the wor