John Peace, initially an independent non-executive director at Standard Chartered Bank, was appointed chairman of the board in July 2009. In 1980, Peace co-founded CCN, a trading company formed by GUS that marketed information services to retailers and other lending organisations. CCN went on to become one of Europe's largest information services businesses and, following the acquisition of other major information services in the US and Europe, it became Experian and Peace became its chief executive. Peace was appointed to the Board of GUS in 1997 and became their group chief executive in January 2000. In 2002 Peace was appointed chairman of Burberry.