M&S to replace CIO Darrell Stein with Tesco's Carl Dawson

Carl Dawson has been CIO for Tesco internet retailing, Shop Direct and Thomas Cook

Marks & Spencer is to replace outgoing IT director Darrell Stein with Tesco's CIO for internet retailing, Carl Dawson.

In an internal announcement reported by Retail Week, M&S chief executive Marc Bolland said: "Carl has a wealth of IT experience from the retail industry and joins us from Tesco. Prior to this, Carl has held CIO positions at both Shop Direct and Thomas Cook."

M&S confirmed to Computing that Dawson would take over after an announcement earlier this week, but that his start date is still unknown.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Dawson spent over six years as group CIO of the Thomas Cook Group, and subsequently left for Shop Direct where he spent four years as group CIO.

He moved to Tesco in January 2013.

Before Dawson joins M&S, Clifford Cohen, who is M&S's head of business solutions at M&S.com will temporarily take over the IT director role.

The role was left vacant when M&S announced that its CIO Darrell Stein would be leaving the business this summer.

Stein, who scooped the CIO of the Year accolade at 2010's Computing/BCS IT Industry Awards, had spent eight years at the retailer, helping to deliver the company's new e-commerce platform. In 2012, he told Computing that M&S was ditching Amazon as its online platform host, and spending £100m to bring the entire operation in-house.

Stein has since been appointed CIO of health research firm Reckitt Benckiser.