Sir Terry Leahy checks out at Tesco after fourteen years

Marcus Leroux, Retail Correspondent & ,}

Sir Terry Leahy is to mount down from the helm of Tesco after a 14-year reign that has altered Britain.

In a warn proclamation yesterday, Sir Terry pronounced that he had completed all he had set out to when he became arch senior manager of the association that he joined, stacking shelves, scarcely 40 years ago. During that time Tesco has been remade in to a tellurian code and hatred figure for those who wish a return to normal high streets.

Under Sir Terry, 55, it has quadrupled in distance and turn the widespread supermarket in 75 per cent of British postcode regions. The series of stores has risen roughly five-fold to 2,500 and about 1 in each 7 outlayed in Britain changes hands at a Tesco till.

When I got this pursuit fourteen years ago I had a plan. That plan was to turn No 1 in the UK, to make use of that clever height to go in poke of long-term poke growth opportunities in non-food, in services and in general expansion, Sir Terry said. It has taken all of those fourteen years but the strategy has turn a organisation reality.

Tesco stays the usually British supermarket to have successfully ventured abroad. Under Sir Terry it pennyless new belligerent in exploiting faithfulness label data, in replacing internal dilemma shops, and charity bank accounts and broadband. It will shortly suggest mortgages.

Sir Terry will step down in Mar subsequent year when he will be transposed by Philip Clarke, who has led Tesco in general markets over the past 6 years. Mr Clarke was described as cut from the same fine cloth as Sir Terry.

Both assimilated the association stacking shelves part-time as teenagers and went through the companys government intrigue after university. Both accost from Liverpool and both are unfussy in an industry well known for salesmanship.

Indeed, the main disproportion in between the dual appears to be that Sir Terry is an Everton fan, whilst his successor, 50, supports the red half of the city.

David Potts, who additionally assimilated the association from school, was allocated arch executive of the Asian business.

Sir Terry, who warranted 5.2 million last year, courted conjecture that he was lining up a purpose in open hold up with dual singular domestic interventions. Last October he criticised propagandize standards as woefully low and pronounced that private employers were being left to collect up the pieces. But Sir Terry said that he would instead combine on his in isolation commercial operation interests, and is expected to omit offers of remunerative nonexecutive directorships.

Principally [my plan is] in isolation investing. I similar to operative with businesses and people that I have a courtesy for and assisting grow those businesses . . . it wouldnt be a portfolio of open companies and I have no plans to go in to politics, he said.

With evil understatement, Sir Terry pronounced that period formulation was regularly a strength of the business. Mr Clarke will be usually the sixth man to lead the commercial operation given Sir Jack Cohen set up emporium in East London after the First World War.

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