Sir Stuart Rose

He’s got his knighthood, he’s got his dream job, he’s got charisma and plenty of money. The one thing Sir Stuart Rose has not got is time – or at least not as much as he might like.

By July 2011, his tenure at Marks & Spencer must end. By then, to crown his career, he must restore the fortunes of the high street institution.

He could be forgiven for thinking he’d already done it. After all, last May M&S once again notched up the magic £1bn profit that it is one of only two British retailers ever to have achieved. And there was a decade between the two occasions M&S pulled off that feat.

But much media and City sentiment has swung against Rose, who issued fourth-quarter figures on Tuesday.
The success he has delivered is increasingly being offset by criticisms of his reign. He is once again under attack about corporate governance, after becoming executive chairman last year. He finds his picture in the papers not for his business prowess, but for looking a little the worse for wear on a night out. And he faces claims that the improved performance during his leadership is proving transitory – an argument forcefully made by Credit Suisse analyst Tony Shiret in a bulky note at the start of last month.

Rose shrugs off much of the noise around him and M&S. At the Retail Week Conference a fortnight ago he was dismissive of the Shiret criticism. “Anybody who has time to write a 104-page note isn’t very busy. I haven’t read the note,” he said.

But friends say that although Rose is a resilient type who generally enjoys the limelight, the intense and unremitting City and media scrutiny that he faces sometimes takes its toll. “It’s been very tough – he’s been vilified,” says one. “He gets upset when he feels he’s been misrepresented.”

Always quick with a wisecrack, a skilled City schmoozer and consummate media performer, the debonair Rose is, for many, Mr M&S. But despite his high profile, he is said to have a collegiate management style.

Nigel Hall, finance director of Arcadia when Rose was chief executive there, before its sale to Sir Philip Green, says that based on his experience: “He has very clear ideas about what he wants to see happen, but his way of getting that is collaborative and motivating. He’s not an autocratic leader.”

Having steered M&S from a low point as Philip Green stalked it in 2004 to renewed highs before the downturn hit, speculation is now rife about who might eventually succeed Rose – Sainsbury’s boss Justin King is one of the favourites – but Rose remains confident that he will leave M&S in a better position than he found it.

“If anybody thinks M&S is the same in 2009 as it was in 2004 they have a very poor memory,” he told the Retail Week Conference. As he reviewed M&S’s fortunes before, during and since taking the helm he maintained: “We’ve had a torrid time, a lost decade, and we live in a tough, attritional world.”

Describing the legacy he would like to leave, Rose said: “I’d like to see the business have a clear passage through the slowdown, have a coherent plan for here and overseas and a seamless and successful transition to new leadership.”

Rose seems to acknowledge he cannot stay at M&S forever. “I’ve got a sell-by date, like our food,” he joked. Mind you, he then went on to say that plenty of M&S food is perfectly good long past its official sell-by date.