His style may be Savile Row but Marks & Spencer boss Sir Stuart Rose this week once again showed himself to be a scrapper. The retailer’s fourth-quarter update confounded bearish expectations as a raft of initiatives bore fruit. Like-for-like declines won’t have them dancing in the foyer of Waterside House but there will be relief that trends are improving rather than worsening.
Strategic and tactical measures, such as the development of the e-tail offer and effective food promotions, have all helped and Rose put the performance primarily down to M&S’s own efforts.
On the evidence of Tuesday’s update, M&S could do better but is no basket case
George Macdonald, Deputy Editor
Rose has been subject to relentless City and media scrutiny and criticism since becoming executive chairman last year and is expected to face an AGM motion calling for his responsibilities to be split. Shareholders are perfectly entitled to submit such motions, but isn’t the point being missed? Surely what matters is whether M&S is doing well or badly and, if it is doing badly, to what extent that may be because power is too concentrated in one person’s hands.
On the evidence of Tuesday’s update, M&S could do better but is no basket case and the expectation-beating performance is unlikely to have been achieved without buy-in across the business to Rose’s leadership.
Important as corporate governance best practice may be, it’s not the be all and end all. After all, weren’t the banks originally regarded as paragons of virtue so far as such matters were concerned? A fat lot of good that did.
Rose gives up his powers in 2011. In the meantime the concern should be maintaining and improving momentum rather than the division of directors’ duties.
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