Asda chairman Allan Leighton has claimed that the government has become “more and more difficult” to deal with and less supportive of business, as he plans to promote the retailer’s next CEO from within.
Leighton said that decisions made in Westminster were resulting in a bigger impact on businesses than when he first ran Asda during the 1990s, the Telegraph reported.
The chair said: “Politics and government have a much more bigger impact on what happens today than they did.
“You know, I think in that period of time, most of government was pretty business-friendly, and over a period of time that’s got, I think, more and more difficult.”
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He noted that there were “lots of constraints that businesses have today that are not of their own making”.
Leighton said that when he led the supermarket in the 1990s, Labour had gone “out of their way to try to engage with businesses” but claimed that today the environment was “less helpful”.
Speaking at the Retail Week x The Grocer conference on Tuesday, the businessman also said that he was planning on promoting somebody internally to the retailer’s CEO role.
The grocery giant has been without a permanent CEO since Roger Burnley left the company in 2021.
He said: “I’ve always been of the belief that you try to promote from within, and a measure of your success is, can you promote from within?”
Leighton added that he had hired a “group of really talented executives,” several of whom could serve under the CEO position. He insisted “that would be the most sensible thing to do”.
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3 Comments. Leave new
Would be nice if they announced the pay rise for hourly colleagues
This is the Retail Gazette Brian. not the Daily Mirror or Morning Star.
Good to compete within someone who once worked as a colleague who knows what it’s like however they can’t get anyone to do the job as it’s not been filled since 2021 due to toxic work culture in Leeds. The former CEO of M&S join ASDA as a manager he soon left the company citing the fact that the ISSA Brothers were clueless in running a large retail business, we know that retail manager’s mainly care about sales figures Mr. Leighton has ruled over 12 months of falling market share for ASDA, when other supermarkets are on the up, you can’t use Labour government as an excuse, the turn around so far has included axing managers, axing team leaders, cutting colleague hours and reducing some prices and it’s not working. He’s completely out of touch, colleagues are saying the company will soon be going under as Private equity has saddled it with over £500 million debt and it’s rated now as junk by one financial group.