Nick Read | |
|---|---|
 Read in 2020 | |
| Chief Executive Officer of Post Office Limited | |
| Assumed office September 2019 | |
| Preceded by | Paula Vennells |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Nicholas James Read March 1966 (age 58) |
| Education | Ampleforth College |
| Profession | business executive |
Nicholas James Read (born March 1966) is a British business executive who has been CEO of Post Office Limited since September 2019. Previously he held senior positions in several customer-facing businesses,and was CEO of Nisa from 2015 to 2017.
Read was born in March 1966 [1] in Hanover,Germany,the son of a soldier. [2] [3] He was educated at Ampleforth College,then an all-boys independent Catholic school,and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. [2]
In August 1986,Read was commissioned in the British Army as a second lieutenant in the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards. [4] He was promoted to lieutenant on 9 August 1988. [5] He left the regular army in August 1989 and was transferred to the Territorial Army, [6] where he gained the rank of captain in October 1993. [7] In 1991–1992 he completed a bachelor's degree in Business Studies at the University of Buckingham. [8]
After leaving the Army in 1993,Read worked for Aldi UK and Deloitte Consulting,and held senior positions at Tesco,Vodafone,HBOS,Lloyds Banking Group,Vodafone,and then Thomas Cook, [3] where he was group customer service director. [9] He received an MBA from Cranfield in 1998. [10]
In February 2015,he was appointed as CEO of the shopkeeper-owned Nisa convenience store group, [9] where he led what was described as a "hard-fought turnaround". [2] He was then involved in the sale of the business to the Co-op group,agreed in November 2017 and completed the next year. [11] From April 2018 he was CEO of ExtraEnergie GmbH, [8] whose British subsidiary Extra Energy [12] ceased trading in November of that year,around the same time as a number of other small energy suppliers collapsed. [13]
In September 2019,Read took up the role of CEO at Post Office Limited after Paula Vennells stepped down. [12] His appointment came at a time when the Post Office was ceasing to receive government subsidy,and when long-running litigation came to a head concerning actions (including prosecutions) taken by the Post Office against self-employed subpostmasters,based on flawed evidence from the Horizon IT system. [2] During 2019,a series of judgments was issued in a group litigation against the Post Office by 555 subpostmasters, [2] in which the Post Office agreed to pay £58 million and incurred £43 million in legal costs. [3] [14] Alan Bates,one of the lead claimants,praised Read for his efforts "to reset the relationship between the Post Office and its sub-postmasters". [2]
In August 2023,Read apologised for "mistakes" made by the Post Office when it linked executives' bonus payments to their work related to the public inquiry into the miscarriage of justice. He said he would voluntarily return an amount (reported to be £54,400) from the £455,000 bonus he received for the 2021–22 financial year. [15] In January 2024,he gave evidence to Parliament's Business and Trade Committee, [16] which led to a dispute over details of his oral replies. [17]
In July 2024,Read decided to step back from his CEO role in order to prepare for the next phase of the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal,which would examine current practices at the Post Office. [18] In September 2024 he resigned from his CEO role,to take effect in March 2025. [19]
He is married to Clare and they have three sons. [2] In 2020 he lived near Andover,Hampshire. [2]
Post Office Limited,commonly known as the Post Office,is a retail post office company in the United Kingdom that provides a wide range of postal and non-postal related products including postage stamps,banking,insurance,bureau de change and identity verification services to the public through its nationwide network of around 11,500 post office branches. Most of these branch post offices are run by franchise partners or by independent business people known as subpostmasters;Post Office Limited directly manages the remaining 1%,known as Crown post offices.
Nisa Retail Limited is a groceries wholesaler operating in the United Kingdom. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Co-operative Group,though itself not a cooperative.
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The National Federation of SubPostmasters (NFSP) is a membership organisation,which represents subpostmasters in the United Kingdom. Subpostmasters are self-employed business operators,approved by Post Office Ltd to act as their agents in running Post Office branches (outlets). In Jan 2023,the NFSP had 6727 members who operated approximately 9,300 post office branches. Post Office Ltd is contractually obliged to consult the NFSP on behalf of subpostmasters.
Timothy Charles Parker is a British executive. He has been chairman of the National Trust,Post Office Ltd and Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS). From 1986 to 2014 he was CEO of a number of companies,including successively Kenwood,Clarks Shoes,Kwik-Fit,the AA and Samsonite. He is currently non-executive chairman of Samsonite,and a director of British Pathe.
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Sir John Alexander Manzoni is a British senior civil servant and business executive,who served as chief executive of the civil service and the Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary from 2014 to 2020.
The British Post Office scandal,also called the Horizon IT scandal,involved the Post Office pursuing thousands of innocent subpostmasters for apparent financial shortfalls caused by faults in Horizon,an accounting software system developed by Fujitsu. Between 1999 and 2015,more than 900 subpostmasters were convicted of theft,fraud and false accounting based on faulty Horizon data,with about 700 of these prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. Other subpostmasters were prosecuted but not convicted,forced to cover shortfalls caused by Horizon with their own money,or had their contracts terminated. The court cases,criminal convictions,imprisonments,loss of livelihoods and homes,debts,and bankruptcies led to stress,illness,family breakdowns and at least four suicides. In 2024,Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the scandal as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history.
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Nicholas Jonathan Read is a British businessman who was the CEO of Vodafone Group plc from October 2018 to December 2022. Read currently works as a senior advisor for Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and is chairman of EXA Infrastructure. He is also a non-executive director for Booking.com.
Paula Anne Vennells is a British former businesswoman who was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Post Office Limited from 2012 to 2019. She is also an ordained Anglican priest who ceased her clerical duties in 2021.
Dame Alison Marie Rose-Slade is a British banker. She was chief executive of NatWest Group from November 2019 to July 2023 and the first woman to lead a major lender in the UK. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2023 Birthday Honours.
Bates &Others v Post Office Ltd was a group legal action taken by 555 subpostmasters against Post Office Limited (POL),commonly known as the Post Office. It was heard by Justice Fraser in the High Court between 2017 and 2019. Six judgments were handed down,two of them dealing with substantive matters while the other four dealt with procedural matters. The Common Issues trial examined the contract between the subpostmasters and the Post Office and found largely in favour of the claimants,while the Horizon Issues trial found that Horizon,the Post Office accounting software,contained bugs,errors and defects that could cause shortfalls in the subpostmasters' accounts. Further scheduled trials were not held,as the claimants and the Post Office settled after the Horizon Issues trial.
Mr Bates vs The Post Office is a four-part British television drama series for ITV,written by Gwyneth Hughes,directed by James Strong and starring an ensemble cast led by Toby Jones. The series is a dramatisation of the British Post Office scandal,a miscarriage of justice in which hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongly prosecuted for theft,false accounting or fraud due to a faulty computer system called Horizon. It was broadcast on four consecutive days from 1 January 2024.
Sir Alan Bates is a former subpostmaster and a leading campaigner for victims of the British Post Office scandal,in which thousands of subpostmasters were accused of dishonesty when faulty Post Office accounting software created shortfalls in their accounts. After the Post Office terminated his contract in 2003 over a false shortfall,he sought out other subpostmasters in the same position and went on to found the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance in 2009. The group took the Post Office to court and,following two favourable judgments in Bates &Others v Post Office Ltd,accepted a settlement of £57.75 million,which left the 555 claimants with little money after legal fees were paid. Bates has continued to campaign for fair compensation for subpostmasters. He was knighted in June 2024 for his campaigning and the following month received an honorary degree from Bangor University.
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Lee Castleton is an English former subpostmaster who was sued by the Post Office and bankrupted after his accounts showed discrepancies due the Post Office's faulty Horizon accounting software. He has since become a prominent campaigner for other victims of the British Post Office scandal.
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