5
Andy Clarke
CEO, Asda
Last ranked: 7
Clarke kicked off the new year by warning his fellow supermarkets they were in for their toughest 12 months yet – and he is fully aware Asda will be no exception.
Asda hasn’t suffered a monumental public meltdown (like Tesco), or issued the mother of all profit warnings (like Morrisons), or written off hundreds of millions of pounds (like Sainsbury’s). And it’s by running a stable and well-run business that Clarke has risen in our ranking. But it must be hugely frustrating for Clarke that his early moves to address the threat from the discounters have failed to result in a compelling uplift in sales.
Growth has been marginal at best, and sometimes worse. With the big four, in the words of Barry Williams (qv), “printing money,” Asda reported a 1.6% decline in third-quarter like-for-like sales in November.
At the time, Clarke insisted he was “pleased” with Asda’s performance in a tough market, but behind closed doors he must be demanding more. That’s the context for his deeply unpopular announcement of a store-level restructure last year, as part of a new five-year cost saving plan, and his more recent announcement of a stripped down board.
It’s also worth noting that of the big four, Asda was the only one to increase market share over Q3. And Clarke also reported a 19.6% boost in online shopping. But his largest foes, the discounters, continue to drag sales away from Asda, and though Clarke is pouring millions into prices to win sales back, a price gap remains, making it a very costly, and potentially futile, exercise.
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