Burberry CEO Marco Gobbetti will leave the British luxury house in late 2021, after nearly five years helming the brand. The CEO is considered to be major success at turning Burberry’s financial and business fortunes in a positive-direction.

Gobbetti assumed the top executive position at Burberry back in 2017 from his predecessor Christopher Bailey, who was Burberry’s CEO and chief creative officer. In 2018, with Bailey’s total departure, Gobbetti recruited current Burberry Chief Creative Officer Riccardo Tisci to the company.

Gobbetti will now return to his beloved Italy, where he will become CEO of Salvatore Ferragamo. In an emergency board meeting at Florence-based Ferragamo, the company announced that chief executive officer Micaela le Divelec Lemmi will now leave at the next board meeting scheduled for Sept. 7.

In March, it was decided that Le Divelec Lemmi would remain at Ferragamo until Dec. 31, 2023. She will be compensated with more than 1.97 million euros “as a consideration for the early termination of the relationship and as compensation for any damages whatsoever related to such early termination” to be paid by Sept. 30 this year.

With experience at luxury houses including Celine, Givenchy and Moschino before Burberry, luxury market veteran Gobbetti becomes the fourth CEO in five years at Ferragamo.

And Riccardo Tisci?

Burberry’s Chief Creative Officer also has strong ties to Italy. The only son in a large family of eight sisters in Puglia, Riccardo Tisci has deep respect for his family of strong women. Tisci father, a fruit seller, died when he was age four.

Interviewed by the Evening Standard in September, 2020, Tisci described himself as a globalist. “If you ask me where I’m from, of course I’m proud to say I’m Italian,” he says. “My DNA is Italian, but I would say I am a gypsy, because I came to England when I was 17, then went to France for 13 years. Now I’m back in London. This summer was the first time in 21 years that I’d spent more than three months in Italy, because I flew over to stay with my mum.”