Olivia Wirth recruits former Qantas lieutenant Andrew Taylor to Myer as Tony Carr, Allan Winstanley up sticks

Myer boss Olivia Wirth has recruited one of her former Qantas lieutenants to help with her attempts to turn around the battling retailer.

Qantas Loyalty’s development chief Andrew Taylor is to become Myer’s chief transformation officer as Ms Wirth acts on a powerful mandate given to her by boardroom colleagues in March.

Mr Taylor’s appointment headlines a series of executive hires and looming departures revealed in updates emailed to staff by Ms Wirth, now the Myer executive chair and chief executive.

She revealed the immediate departure of chief information Ben Fitzgerald, as well as temporary arrangements to cover for two senior executives returning to Britain after having flagged their resignations in autumn.

“I recognise this is a detailed note touching on some significant changes to the team,” Ms Wirth said in one email to staff.

“The changes are designed to establish the right structure to build our capability and support our next phase of growth.”

Myer is trying to boost its investor appeal by pursuing a scrip deal to acquire the clothing retailers Jay Jays, Just Jeans, Jacqui E, Dotti and Portmans from Solomon Lew’s Premier Investments.

With this potential 717-store deal last month moving to due diligence, Myer has lured supply chain veteran Darren Wedding from the Super Retail Group — owner of the Supercheap Auto, Macpac, Rebel and BCF chains.

Ms Wirth credited Mr Wedding with transforming the supply chain and distribution centres for Super Retail’s “online business and 700-plus stores”.

But Myer chief operating officer Tony Sutton will have to temporarily oversee supply chain operations from later this month and until Mr Wedding starts his new job in March.

Current supply chain general manager Tony Carr and chief merchandise chief merchandise officer Allan Winstanley are leaving this month.

Both executives had flagged their plans to leave just days after Ms Wirth was appointed Myer executive chair in March and earmarked signed up to take over as chief executive.

Merchandise planning boss Chris Pitts will be acting chief merchandise until Mr Winstanley’s replacement is found.

Ms Wirth said she was also creating a new role of digital commerce general manager as the group continued to “increase our focus on capturing more online sales growth”.

Myer has hired one-time KPMG consultant and Walmart online operation executive Warwick Blunt to be the digital commerce manager.