One of the owners of Grimsby Town has been named UK Investment Minister after Poppy Gustafsson quit the role.
Vice chair Jason Stockwood, who saw the League Two side topple Manchester United on penalties in the League Cup recently, will step back from the club’s board and day-to-day responsibilities at Blundell Park.
The former boss of dating website Match.com grew up in a single-parent family and once described himself in an interview with the BBC as a “council estate kid”. He took over the club with fellow entrepreneur and Mariners fan Andrew Pettit in 2021.
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Stockwood will be given a peerage, joining the House of Lords, in order to take the role.
His predecessor Poppy Gustafsson, co-founder and former CEO of cybersecurity giant Darktrace, quit as Investment Minister after just 11 months.
Despite heading the Office for Investment, the agency responsible for generating billions of pounds of inbound trade for the UK, she was low-key and had not posted on LinkedIn in seven months.
The Cambridgeshire-born businesswoman was handed a life peerage and made Baroness Gustafsson to take the role, having received an OBE for services to cybersecurity in 2019 and being promoted to CBE in the 2025 New Year Honours.
She had previously stepped down as CEO of Darktrace following its £4.3bn acquisition by US private equity firm Thoma Bravo, succeeded by COO Jill Popelka.
A Sky News source said her resignation as Investment Minister was the result of a challenging professional schedule clashing with the demands of raising a young family.
The moves are seen as part of a ministerial reshuffle by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer following the resignation of his deputy Angela Rayner over her failure to pay £40,000 of stamp duty when purchasing a flat in Hove.
Earlier this year Stockwood saw a bid to become the first elected mayor of Greater Lincolnshire end in failure, with Reform UK candidate Dame Andrea Jenkyns winning by a wide margin.
“Everyone at GTFC congratulates Jason on this important national appointment and thanks him for his continued passion, dedication, and service to the Mariners,” read a Grimsby Town statement.