Asda chair ‘embarrassed’ by recent performance

Asda chair Lord Rose has stated that he is “embarrassed” by the supermarket’s performance and indicated it could be time for co-owner Mohsin Issa to step back his involvement.

Last week, the supermarket saw its like-for-like sales drop 5.3% in Q2 while its market share fell to 12.7%, it was at 14.8% when the Issa’s bought the company in 2021.

Lord Rose told The Telegraph: “I am going to be perfectly honest with you. I’ve been in this industry for a long time and I am slightly embarrassed. I won’t deny that. I don’t like being second, third or fourth. And if you look honestly now at the comparative numbers of Kantar or whatever index, we are not performing as well as should be. And I don’t like that.”

“I wouldn’t encourage him [Mohsin] to [intervene in operations], and I am the chairman.We always said Mohsin was a particular horse for a particular course. He is a disrupter, an entrepreneur, he is an agitator. We’ve added a significant number of stores and we’ve changed a lot but it now needs a different animal. In the nicest possible way, Mohsin’s work is largely complete.”

In Q2, the supermarket started a £50m store upgrade programme to improve the customer experience across 171 stores.

Asda is also investing an additional £30m in staff hours to improve the replenishment of stock during opening hours in store and increase the number of staff on checkouts at the weekend.