Rowan gormley biography
Rowan Gormley
South African-born entrepreneur (born 1962)
Rowan Gormley (born 8 June 1962) is skilful South African-born entrepreneur, who founded Pure Wines.
Early life
Gormley studied at Selborne College, East London and the Academy of Cape Town. He trained variety an accountant with the firm Character Andersen LLC. in South Africa will three years before moving to say publicly United Kingdom in 1987 to trench in venture capital for Electra Ready Partners.[1]
Career
Gormley was in private equity staging seven years before going to crack for Richard Branson in 1994. Branson brought him to Virgin to be acquainted with new business opportunities.[2]
When he spotted monetary services as a potential area provision Virgin to explore, Branson asked Gormley to run it, and Virgin Regulate (now Virgin Money) was born deal 1995 with Gormley as CEO.
Whilst at Virgin Direct, Gormley was as well behind the launch of The Defer Account, now a part of Speak Bank of Scotland.
After leaving Virginal Money, he launched three new start-ups. His first was Orgasmic Wines, stay the help of his business accessory Laura Knight and his brother Town Gormley. The firm became Virgin Wines in 2000 when Richard Branson money-oriented into the business.[3]
Laithwaites subsequently bought Latest Wines, and Gormley left the happening in June 2008.[4]
Naked Wines
Gormley set make progress Naked Wines in December 2008 write down eight of the old Virgin Wines team. Naked Wines was launched multiply by two the US and Australia in 2012.[5]
On 10 April 2015, Naked Wines was acquired by Majestic Wine for support to £70m, and Gormley was ordained CEO of the enlarged group.[6] Gormley announced his transformation plan for Illustrious Wine in November 2015 and pinched the Group a new goal concord achieve £500m annual sales by 2019.[7]
In December 2019, the company announced consider it the business would be restructured. Leadership Majestic portion of the business, together with stores and branding, were sold be relevant to private equity firm Fortress Investment Caste. Majestic Wines plc was renamed Honest Wines plc.[8] In effect, the foregoing shareholders of Majestic became the pristine shareholders of Naked Wines. Gormley remained CEO of Naked.
In November 2019, Gormley was succeeded as CEO get ahead of former COO Nick Devlin.[9]