Asda chair Lord Rose has said he has been “embarrassed” by its performance under his supervision and believes co-owner Mohsin Issa should step back from running the supermarket.
The supermarket last week posted a 5.3% like-for-like sales fall in its second quarter, and 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.”
Rose urged Issa to step back from the day-to-day running of Asda. The former M&S boss said: “I wouldn’t encourage him to [intervene in operations], and I am the chairman.”
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Rose, who plans to take on a more active role at Asda while it looks for a new full-time CEO, continued: “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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