Dixons Carphone


Dixons Carphone plc is a British multinational electrical and telecommunications retailer and services company headquartered in London, formed on 7 August 2014 by the merger of Dixons Retail and Carphone Warehouse Group. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
The company operates under a number of brands in the United Kingdom, Ireland and mainland Europe. These include Currys, PC World, Team Knowhow and Carphone Warehouse in the United Kingdom; Dixons Travel in airports in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Oslo; Currys PC World and Carphone Warehouse in the Republic of Ireland; Elkjøp in Norway; Elgiganten/Gigantti in the other Nordic countries; and Kotsovolos in Greece.

History

Following shareholder agreement in July 2014, the £3.8 billion merged entity was launched on 7 August 2014; on the first day of trading the shares in the merged business were owned 50:50 by the former Dixons Retail and former Carphone Warehouse shareholders. Carphone Warehouse's Sir Charles Dunstone was appointed chairman, and Sebastian James became Chief Executive.
On the first day of trading, the company opened Carphone Warehouse concessions in seven PC World or Currys stores. In December 2016, Dixons and SSE, a domestic energy supplier, announced a partnership to provide "connected home" services in the United Kingdom.
In January 2018, Sebastian James resigned as Chief Executive to become President and Managing Director of Boots UK. Alex Baldock left his previous role as Chief Executive of Shop Direct to succeed James as Chief Executive of Dixons Carphone.
In March 2019, Dixons Carphone was given a £29.1m fine from the Financial Conduct Authority for mis-selling its Geek Squad service. The FCA found that the company's staff were trained to sell the service to customers who already had an insurance cover. During the period under investigation, between 1 December 2008 and 30 June 2015, Carphone Warehouse sold Geek Squad policies worth more than £444.7m.
Dixons Carphone did not contest the FCA's findings and qualified for a 30% discount, reducing the fine from £41.6m. In June 2019, shares in Dixons Carphone fell almost 20% following a significant decline in full year profits, mainly caused by consumers' growing delay in upgrading their mobile phones.

Operations

The company owns the following brands:

United Kingdom and Ireland

The KnowHow brand is also present in the Nordic stores.

Southern Europe

The group was fined £400,000 by the Information Commissioner in January 2018, as a result of unauthorised access to the personal data of over three million customers in 2015.
A further security breach, said to affect 1.2 million customers, was reported by the company in June 2018. The number of customers affected was later increased to ten million.

Tech support

In May 2020, Dixons Carphone has offered free phones, networking and a dedicated phone line enabling services to help hundreds of elderly citizens who feel trapped and alone through the pandemic.