Profit Warning Sees Tesco Boss Step Down

Profit Warning Sees Tesco Boss Step Down

Tesco boss Philip Clarke is set to quit after the UK’s biggest retailer warned it would miss profit forecasts.

During a disastrous three-year reign that saw him spend more than £1 billion on a failed turnaround plan, Phillip Clarke will be replaced in October by Unilever executive Dave Lewis.

The darling of the retail sector during two decades of uninterrupted earnings growth, Tesco started losing ground in its main UK market in the final years of long-standing CEO Terry Leahy.

More recently, Tesco has been squeezed between discounters Aldi and Lidl at the one end and upmarket grocers such as Waitrose at the other, and hurt by the slowest growth in the overall UK grocery sector for a decade.

Its attempts to respond were hampered by costly mistakes abroad, including a failed expansion into the United States, originally a Leahy initiative.

Clarke, a 40-year Tesco veteran who started as a teenager stacking shelves in a store managed by his father, fought back with a wide-ranging plan including cutting prices as well as revamping stores and product ranges, but the firm’s market share has continued to decline.