Leahy sticks the boot in at Tesco

Former Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy, the marketing man who became chief exec and oversaw huge growth of the retailer, has stuck the boot in once more, claiming the supermarket allowed the trust of its millions of customers to be eroded.
And, speaking on BBC Panorama last night, Leahy was in no doubt who was to blame for the current crisis, citing a failure of leadership under his successor, Philip Clarke.
He added: “Tesco is the biggest, people expect it to have the best prices and know they can trust Tesco to deliver that and not have to shop around and check that they’re getting the best deal.
“I think that some of that trust has been eroded, which has meant that people have shopped around.” Leahy has been a long-term critic of Clarke’s regime, mainly through off the record briefings, although once Clarke was ousted last year he became more vocal.
However, his predecessor, Lord MacLaurin, had claimed Leahy “lost the plot” towards the end of his tenure and should have left before embarking on the US venture, while others accused him of leaving Clarke a “hospital pass” at the supermarket.
Leahy told Panorama: “People tried very hard to do the right thing, it clearly has not worked. In the end that’s a failure of leadership, not a failure of the business, not a failure of the people who work hard every day in the business.
“When you’re the CEO, if it goes well, you get credit, if it doesn’t go well, you must take responsibility and Phil Clarke has taken that responsibility and paid the price with his job.”
The programme also confirmed what many analysts had been saying for months, with a number of people who have left the organisation describing a series of slanging matches at senior levels. “I think it lost too much talent,” Leahy bemoaned.

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