verylittlehelps

If DL got his knighthood for "turning the company round" why did TL get a knighthood when he must have left it in a terrible state 

They can't both be justifiable 

In fairness TL got out in time when the company peaked and the share price was at its highest. It was then that the new CEO did not set the company on the road to deal with the increased competition from Aldi and Lidl. He felt that these companies would not affect Tesco’s market share and growth potential. Incredibly shortsighted. DL had to completely overhaul the company and bring it into the 21st century!! Deserves his knighthood!

Due to the nature of the CEOs role typically lasting 4 years and less, the errors of previous CEOs tend to make themselves known and fall into the lap of the successor, Yes, Phillip Clarke wasn't a good CEO by any measure, but a lot of the challenges he faced were due to Terry Leahys aggressive international expansion strategies, Philip Clarke was rightfully scrutinised for Tescos loss in Market Share, but on the same token, the dwindling has continued under Dave Lewis's leadership.

David Lewis is given far too much credit for "saving" Tesco, all he did was balance the books by selling off Terry Leahys international vanity projects and other venture capitalist escapades, especially after the historic accounting scandal which was in place before Philip Clarkes tenure, all he did was take a page out of the CEOs playbook, it's quite easy to balance the spreadsheet by wielding the axe, you don't need to be a CEO to do that.

He got the company out of the mess that it was in when Clarke went, although you could well make a case of saying it was already in a mess when Leahy went but at the time it all looked rosy, although what has Drastic Dave actually done other than sell and cut as much as possible, and now there is little left to cut off he goes.

The thing is that  DL sold off quite a bit of the company bringing in considerable amounts of money getting ride of under performing stores here getting rid of loss making us stores and Cutting staff all to improve the bottom line, without these measures i am not sure if the company was/is in the good position the finanantial institutions think it is. In order to  replicate this success KM will not have much to work with, except sales the covid as bad as it is with the increased sales may help the bottom line for now

Dave Lewis's approach has been very focused on the short term, selling off underperforming and loss making parts of the business may seem like an obvious thing to do, but it sends a message of uncertainty, there's a lot of psychology and politics that goes in to the message of downsizing and that is it's in a position of weakness, a major factor which influences the general populations decision making is how secure and established an institution is, by downgrading their international presence and their non-retail services, they're saying previous leadership have bitten off more than they can chew, that there's no clarity and consistency in their business expansion strategies.

The only 3 things Lewis has got right is managing to forge the Booker partnership (though the CMA definitely deserves scrutiny for allowing the deal to happen.) The restructuring of management roles (Deputy Store Managers weren't needed in Express, but Shift Leaders should be salaried roles equivalent to Team Managers) and the cuts to head office. The rest of his decision making has been very short sighted and the ramifications of it will be seen during Murphys tenure, the main one being the inability to compete effectively against the German discounters and the lowering of staff benefits and pay resulting in higher staff turnover and more incompetent staff at all levels in store.