Nike Europe Welcomes a New Leader: Lucas Balcells Steps into Key Role at Jordan

More changes in Nike’s management team, now in Europe. With a career spanning almost ten years at the American sports equipment giant, Spanish executive Lucas Balcells is leaving his position at the group’s headquarters in Beaverton (Oregon) to join the European management of the Jordan brand.

Based in Amsterdam, where Nike’s European headquarters are located, Balcells will take over as Jordan’s general manager for Europe and the Middle East, taking charge of the company’s own stores and online platform. Jordan is, along with Converse, one of Nike’s sub-brands. In 2024, Jordan posted global revenue of $7.27 billion (down 16.45% from 2023) and accounted for 16% of the total business.

After starting his professional career as an analyst at JP Morgan, Balcells made the leap to the retail business in 2013 with his incorporation to the Imaginarium toy chain, where he came to lead the business in the Americas, based in Mexico City.

Nike places Lucas Balcells at Jordan Europe after the appointment of Santiago Arredondo as head of Emea

In 2017, the executive joined Nike as retail director for Spain and Portugal, a position from which he jumped to retail management for southern Europe, later becoming head of the same area for Latin America. In 2023, Balcells was transferred to Nike headquarters, where he has gone through two positions until his move to Europe.

Balcells’ jump to Jordan in Europe follows the appointment, last August, of Santiago Arredondo as head of the Nike-owned brand in Europe, Middle East and Africa (Emea), with the rank of vice president. Arredondo has a sixteen-year track record with the multinational, which he joined in 2009.

Nike is carrying out a profound reshuffle of its management team since the appointment last year of Elliott Hill as CEO, who took over from John Donahoe with the mission of turning around the company’s evolution. Over the past few months, key company executives have left their positions, while Hill has undone changes aimed at centralizing decisions in Beaverton.

This appointment is part of the executive restructuring undertaken by Elliott Hill, CEO of Beaverton

This year, for example, the heads of the four geographic areas in which the group operates have reported to the CEO. These are Angela Dong for China, Carl Grebert for Emea (Europe, Middle East and Africa), Tom Peddie for North America, and Cathy Sparks for Apla (Asia-Pacific and Latin America).

Pending the group’s first-half results this week, Nike closed the first quarter of the current financial year with a 1% increase in sales, surprising the market after a string of down quarters. In the period ended Aug. 31st, the swoosh company posted sales of $11.72 billion, up 1% from $11.589 billion in the same period. Nike ended 2024 with a 10% drop in sales, down 12% in the fourth quarter.