HOWZAT

Those who know Holmes well say it barely ruffles his serene exterior. He just works through it, putting in incredible hours day after day: up at 5am, into the office before 7am, leaving after 8pm. It may be his first time as chief executive of an FTSE 100 company, but that is a punishing schedule.

“I’ve always been like that,” he shrugs. Why? He thinks it is partly his upbringing. His father was a Home Counties accountant who chucked it in after a business reversal and took the family back to the land in Shropshire. “We went from a very comfortable situation to, um, well, uncertainty.” Chickens, cows and a lot less money. Holmes was the eldest of four children, and felt the insecurity of the change. That, he says, probably made him more guarded, more conventional, more driven than his siblings — and more determined to leave nothing to chance.

Hence those who have witnessed his climb up the corporate ranks have always noted his work rate and pragmatism first, and his personality second. He read engineering at Bristol university because, he says, he wanted a job, and jobs meant Birmingham, close to his Shropshire home, and Birmingham wanted engineers. Then the job market for engineers dried up so he tried consultancy instead, joining Price Waterhouse.

That played well to his skill set: analytical, strategic, numerate, likeable. From there he got into McKinsey, working with clients in oil, packaged goods and retailing. He loved the immediacy of retailing. Kingfisher was a customer and, after catching Mulcahy’s eye on a fact-finding trip to America, he was offered the finance director’s job at B&Q, the group’s DIY chain. It was his foot in the door.

He helped B&Q through a sticky patch, did a brief stint heading Woolworths — “as someone famously said, it was like flying a jumbo on manual controls” — before being given Kingfisher’s electricals business. Many saw him as Mulcahy’s favoured son. They shared a passion for sailing. But Mulcahy never made the promise of succession explicit.

When M&S offered Holmes a top slot, he jumped ship. Mulcahy was, it is said, so angry that he held Holmes to his contract, putting him on gardening leave.

A big falling-out? “Allegedly,” says Holmes.

Have they spoken since? Hardly, it seems. “Anyway,” he says, “there was no guarantee that I would be chief executive of Kingfisher or that I should commit to stay.” And the M&S job was too good to turn down. He knew Vandevelde would soon be looking for a chief executive — he was filling both chairman and chief executive roles at the time — and Holmes would be nicely placed.

The Mulcahy spat was a rocky patch, but Holmes remained unruffled. Why? Friends point to his wife Kate, a cancer nurse, who provides his grounding. “What she does puts what I do in perspective,” he says.

To let off steam, he throws his £600,000 salary at fast cars and slower boats, currently a Mercedes Brabus (he has moved out of his Porsche phase) and an 18ft catamaran that he sails from his Cornish holiday home. Other than that, he just keeps on working.

And if the dissatisfaction with M&S’s performance grows? He smiles. It is no secret that some investors might prefer a boss with more traditional retail flair — Stuart Rose, the former chief of Arcadia, for instance (an old M&S hand), or even Radice. Holmes doesn’t turn a hair. “I am very confident in what I am doing, and you will have to ask Vittorio what his aspirations are. He is, I know, extremely excited and very happy with what he is doing here, and in the end it just comes down to what you deliver.”

And the attacks on his style? “Look,” he says, spreading his hands, “one of the characteristics I have always admired is grace under pressure. I do believe in having a certain modesty about the way one approaches things. And I think that is appropriate for the M&S brand, a brand that is about more than individuals. “As leader of that I am proud I share the sorts of values that make M&S what it is to customers and why they care about it, and care about the sort of things M&S does and wouldn’t do, whether that’s sourcing food or manufacturing techniques or employment practices. Either that feels very natural and is something you want to be part of and espouse, or it doesn’t.”

Smart response. Even so, last week the Christmas decorations went up at M&S stores, heralding the start of the key retail season. Holmes needs a good one.