Apple has promoted its Senior Director of International Retail and former local store manager Steve Cano to replace outgoing executive Ron Johnson as Senior Vice President of Retail, according to a new report. Citing an anonymous source, Cult of Mac reports that Cano was previously tipped as a likely candidate to replace Johnson—who officially left Apple earlier this week to become CEO of J.C. Penney—by the Apple Retail Workers Union.
As noted in the report, Cano got his start with Apple working as a store manager at the Palo Alto store—which happened to be then CEO Steve Jobs’ home store—and later moved to the SoHo store in New York, then went to manage the Ginza store in Tokyo, Japan. He was later appointed regional director as more stores were opened in Japan, and was later named Apple’s first Senior Director of International Retail, a position that saw him work out of a London office, overseeing a string a new stores in Europe. Apple has yet to confirm the report or add Cano to its online executive profiles.
Update: Cult of Mac has since updated its report to say that Apple has issued a statement saying Cano has not been named to Johnson’s former post. A company spokesperson said: “The search is underway with lots of interest and we are carefully selecting Ron’s successor. We have nothing to announce today.”
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