Comment: Welcome back to a top retail role, Sir Stuart Rose

It’s good to see Sir Stuart Rose back in retail’s public company world as chairman of online grocer Ocado.

Rose will bring a further welcome splash of colour and personality to listed retail, as well as his experience from a working life spent in the industry.

His appointment prompts a couple of observations. One of Rose’s favourite maxims is ‘look out the window’ and he has applied it throughout his business career.

It’s interesting that having looked out the window since leaving Marks & Spencer, the future he sees is online.

As an investor in ecommerce group The Hut, and chairman of m-commerce business Mobile Money Network, it’s the rapidly emerging and transformative world of ecommerce that has frequently engaged his interest.

If anybody hasn’t realised, the shift of focus by such a veteran shopkeeper with a visceral link to consumers’ changing habits and interests - like the similar path taken by former Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy - is a signal of how the retail landscape is being reshaped.

As far as Ocado is concerned, the hope will be that Rose’s hiring can rekindle the City’s relationship with the etailer.

Rose can be a Marmite character, but few would dispute he is one of the best communicators not just in retail but in business. While it’s crucial a chairman is independent of executive management, Rose could play a highly effective role in ensuring relations with the City are smoother.

His predecessor, Lord Michael Grade, has chaired Ocado since its days as a private company so Rose’s appointment marks a break with the past and a fresh perspective at Ocado - an opportunity for it also to ‘look out the window’. That is likely to be welcomed, even though Rose has had his own run-ins with the Square Mile, most notably when he controversially became executive chairman of M&S.

Analysts didn’t change Ocado recommendations on news of Rose’s appointment. They’ll wait to see how it performs as capacity increases with the opening of a second warehouse. But Rose’s arrival, if nothing else, may open the door to eventual reassessment of Ocado.