Australia’s Woolworths chair Gordon Cairns to retire

(Reuters) -Australia’s Woolworths Group said on Tuesday that Chairman Gordon Cairns would retire in October after seven years in the role.

Long-standing non-executive director Scott Perkins will succeed Cairns at the country’s largest supermarket chain operator.

Cairns, who gave up a fifth of his board fee when Woolworths faced a wage scandal in 2019, plans to step down after the group’s annual general meeting on Oct. 26.

The duo had a similar career move in 2020, when Perkins was elected to succeed Cairns as the chairman of Australia’s second-largest power producer, Origin Energy Ltd. (https://bit.ly/3PXqYpA)

(Reporting by Indranil Sarkar in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Jaskiran Singh; Editing by Devika Syamnath)