Asda chair admits embarrassment over performance and urges Issa to step back
Asda chair Lord Rose has admitted he is “embarrassed” by the supermarket’s performance and believes co-owner Mohsin Issa should step back from its day-to-day running.
His comments come as the grocer last week posted a 5.3% like-for-like sales fall in its second quarter. Meanwhile, its market share has fallen from 14.8% when the Issa brothers purchased the chain in 2021 to 12.7% last month.
Lord Rose told The Telegraph: “I am going to be perfectly honest with you. I’ve been in this industry for a long time and I am slightly embarrassed. I won’t deny that.
“I don’t like being second, third or fourth. And if you look honestly now at the comparative numbers of Kantar or whatever index, we are not performing as well as should be. And I don’t like that.”
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Former M&S boss Rose also said Issa should step back from the day-to-day management of Asda.
He said: “I wouldn’t encourage him to [intervene in operations], and I am the chairman. We need a full-time, fully experienced retail executive to come in.”
“We always said Mohsin was a particular horse for a particular course. He is a disrupter, an entrepreneur, he is an agitator.”
“We’ve added a significant number of stores and we’ve changed a lot but it now needs a different animal. In the nicest possible way, Mohsin’s work is largely complete.”
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His management of M&S was also embarrassing. Spot the common factor.
The Issa brothers are speculators not retailers. Specifically grocery retailers. Where’s Lord Rose is a retailer and specifically grocery retailer.
Actually not. He worked for Arcadia and Argos. His grocery experience was overseeing the merger of Iceland and Booker to firm the disastrous Big Food Comoany.
Rose worked for Arcadia and Argos. His main grocery experience was overseeing the merger of Iceland and Booker to form The Big Food Group. The result of that was, er , embarrassing.
His management of M&S was embarrassing. Maybe there’s a common factor.