“We need a full-time fully experienced retail executive to come in,” said Stuart Rose, the chair of Asda, a month ago as he confessed to being “embarrassed” about the supermarket chain’s loss of market share. Now he has found someone who fits the bill temporarily: one Lord Rose of Monewden. He will “assume” day-to-day executive responsibilities from Mohsin Issa, one of the co-owners and leaders of the £6.8bn leveraged buyout of Asda in 2021.
Rose definitely counts as fully experienced since he’s led Burton, Argos, Arcadia, Marks & Spencer and more in his time. But a return to executive duties at the youthful age of 75 probably wasn’t what he envisaged when he hopped onboard the Issa brothers/TDR Capital buyout vehicle. Offerings of sage advice from the back-seat was surely the gist of the original script.
Needs must, and, since Asda says it “continues to progress its search to recruit a CEO”, one assumes Rose will be as pleased as anyone when a permanent appointment can be made. This awkward interregnum, however, rather sums up the chaotic progress of Asda since the purchase from the US titan Walmart.
Mohsin Issa has been filling the chief executive’s role, but without the job title, since 2021. Meanwhile, most of the excitement has happened away from the shop floor. Asda bought a pile of UK and Irish petrol stations from EG Group, a business also controlled by TDR and the Issas. Then TDR bought brother Zuber’s 22.5% stake in Asda, increasing its holding to 66.5%. In June, Mohsin said he planned to concentrate on EG. In the meantime, the brothers have been dividing their assets within the EG empire amid reports (denied) of a rift between them.
With all that going on, one cannot be surprised that Asda’s market share has fallen from 13.7% to 12.6% in the past year in a market where a few fractions of a percentage traditionally count as a big shift (thus Rose’s “embarrassed” remark to the Telegraph). Supermarket retailing is brutally competitive and the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury’s enjoy having a distracted rival that is carrying piles of junk-rated debt. Remember, too, that Asda has simultaneously been spending £800m on new IT systems to detach itself from Walmart’s antiquated set-up.
Rose’s elevation, plus TDR’s assumption of majority control, looks a step towards much-needed stability. The business has already acknowledged its need to improve in retailing basics such as controlling checkout queues. The completion of the IT programme should help in other areas. And nobody should doubt Rose’s ability to impose more discipline on the place – and a TDR executive will be working alongside him.
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Yet it’s still bizarre, given that Mohsin Issa signalled his intention to “step back” from Asda months ago, that the company has still not been able to attract a top-name retailing chief executive from outside on what, one assumes, would be the usual private equity-style megabucks incentives. Shouldn’t it all have been sorted out by now? If Rose is still in day-to-day harness six months from now, Asda’s troubles will be worse than thought.