John Lovell, head of pensions at the retailer J Sainsbury, where he was in charge of £6 billion in staff retirement funds, has left to take on a similar role at Coats plc and its parent, the Guinness Peat Group, which have been weighed down by pension fund problems in recent years.

Coats, a manufacturer of clothing threads based in Uxbridge, is the last remaining asset of the Guinness Peat Group, an investment company that was active in the 1990s and 2000s, and once helped scupper a merger between the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Borse. It announced it was winding down in 2011.