People: wholesale changes for two experts

Their firm, Wholesale Matters, is targeting food and drink companies but will also work with other suppliers.

Benson - who ran Bellevue with his brother, George - said: "With my 30-plus years' experience as a wholesaler and cash and carry operator dealing with suppliers, coupled with Richard's vast knowledge of how suppliers operate, we are ideally placed to help both sectors re-evaluate their businesses."

Yates cut his teeth at Mars before working for Scottish & Newcastle and then setting up his own sales company, Flair Factor, in 2006.

From food and drink to wholesale of a different kind, with Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (Swip) appointing Kevin Addison as its new head of wholesale.

Addison will target Swip's financial products at retailers including independent financial advisers (IFAs). He joined Swip in 2008 as head of discretionary sales, having previously worked at Gartmore.

His appointment is the second senior change in the space of a week at Swip, which has named Terence Nahar as investment director.

Nahar joins from Royal London Asset Management, where he was head of derivatives, having previously worked as an associate director in the pension and insurance structuring team at Goldman Sachs International.

Both Nahar and Addison will be based in London.

Changes have also been made at the CBI, with Lucy Armstrong being named as the new chairwoman of the trade body's SME Council.

Armstrong - who is chief executive of the Alchemists, an organisation that matches experienced entrepreneurs with high-growth businesses that need coaching - succeeds Dumfries-based Prof Russel Griggs, a former director of Scottish Enterprise and a current member of the Scottish Government's National Economic Forum, who has led the CBI's SME Council for the past three years. Armstrong is based in north-east England.