Kesa Electricals, the owner of Comet, has named a new chief executive less than a month after warning investors that it expected Britain's second biggest electrical goods retailer to fall into the red.

The company, which demerged from from Kingfisher five years ago, said that Thierry Falque-Pierrotin, from the French retail behemoth PPR, would succeed his fellow countryman Jean-Noel Labroue in January.

However, a spokesman for Kesa insisted that the change was unrelated to trading, pointing that Mr Labroue, 60, had signalled his intention to retire more than a year ago. "It's no surprise to the market. This is an orderly handover," he said.

Kesa reported last month that like-for-like sales at Comet had fallen by 9.9 per cent in the three months to the end of July, while Darty, its French business, had suffered a fall of 3.2 per cent.

Mr Falque-Pierrotin has worked for PPR since 1990, for the past seven years as chairman and chief executive of Recats, the home shopping group that focuses on fashion and home decoration.

He has been a member of the PPR group executive committee since 1997.

David Newlands, the Kesa chairman, thanked Mr Labroue, who joined Darty in 1979, for his "considerable contribution" to Kesa, in particular for managing the demerger from Kingfisher in 2003.

Shares of Kesa, which have fallen by more than 60 per cent in the past 12 months, were down by 8.25p, or more than 7 per cent, to 104p in early trading.

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