Kantar Group, a British professional services firm has appointed Guillaume Bacuvier as the Global CEO of its Worldpanel Division with effect from September 13. Guillaume would take charge of the $300 million business after most recently serving as CEO of dunnhumby a customer data science firm, where he led a technological transformation of the business. 

Kantar Group a British professional services firm which was founded in 1992. It has more than 30,000 employees working in 100 countries. The firm’s Worldpanel team boasts a panel of more than 1.5 million shoppers around the world, helping Kantar to inform the growth strategies of the world’s leading CPG/FMCG brands and retailers. 

The appointment of the division’s new head follows the news that former Worldpanel CEO Josep Montserrat has been promoted to Non-executive Chairman of the business. Having joined Worldpanel in 1994, he became CEO of the Worldpanel business in 2007 – and over the following 14 years, he has built a business that serves as industry currency standard data in almost 50 countries. 

Commenting on Montserrat’s contribution to Kantar in the last year particularly, Deputy CEO and CFO Ian Griffiths said, “Under Josep’s leadership [during the pandemic] the Worldpanel team worked tirelessly to keep clients informed of the unprecedented changes to consumer behaviour. The data and insights generated by Josep and his team quite literally helped supermarkets keep their shelves stocked during the pandemic period. We thank Josep for his incredible contribution to Kantar so far and look forward to his continued leadership in his new role.”

Stepping into the role of CEO, Guillaume Bacuvier’s expertise and experience will help oversee the next phase of growth for the Worldpanel business. This new era of development will be heavily influenced by technology and advanced data analytics, and Bacuvier specialises in these areas particularly.

Lately, he was Group CEO of dunnhumby, which operates in customer data science for the retail and CPG/FMCG industry. There, he led a commercial and technological transformation of the business, involving material investment in the company's product portfolio, and both acquisitions and divestments to strengthen the company are competitive positioning. This helped the firm improve its operating performance and expanded its customer base across the globe whilst improving employee engagement and customer satisfaction.

Before his four-year-tenure with dunnhumby, Bacuvier was at Google for more than a decade, holding a number of senior roles, culminating in Vice-President, Advertising Solutions, EMEA where he was responsible for all aspects of the core online advertising business in the region, including commercial P&L for Google’s Doubleclick and Analytics business. He also brings notable advisory pedigree to the firm, having begun his career as a Strategy Consultant in BoozAllen Hamilton’s TMT practice before moving to Orange Group, where he was responsible for messaging services for all Orange OpCos.