Tesco’s former chairman Lord MacLaurin used the stage of Tesco’s annual meeting to defend the record of current chief executive Philip Clarke and criticise the legacy left behind by former chief executive Sir Terry Leahy.
Leahy presided over a hugely successful 14 years for the firm as it increased sales, stores and market share from 1997 to 2011 and expanded globally. Sir Terry became chief executive when Lord MacLaurin was still chairman. He was chairman from 1985 to 1997.
The firm enjoyed growth of more than 10 per cent each year during Leahy’s time as chief executive.
He also led Tesco to start businesses in 11 different territories.
However, MacLaurin said that the move to expand overseas helped to cause the current problems and insisted that Mr Clarke requires three years to turn the fortunes of the supermarket around.
He said: “You have to judge a CEO not just by day-to-day performance, but by his legacy. It is sad to see the legacy of the former chief executive in the US. It has led to enormous writedowns.”
Lord MacLaurin said that the performance of a chief executive should also be judged on the legacy that was left for his successor.
He said: "And I think that we are all very sad in this hall to see the legacy that Terry Leahy left.
"It is a very sad situation - your enormous writedowns, and the situation in America.
"This job is going to be probably two or three years," he added.
Tesco was forced to axe its US business, ‘Fresh & Easy’ earlier this year after five years in which it had never made a profit and cost £1 billion in write-down costs.
Tesco was forced to issue its first profit warning for 20 years after poor Christmas trading in the run-up to Christmas 2011.
Last year, Tesco saw its annual profits fall to £120 million from £2.8 billion the year before as it began a huge investment programme to try and revitalise its stores and product range.
Mr Clarke said that Tesco will slow down on large new store openings and focus on smaller convenience stores, improving customer service and online retail.
Sir Terry Leahy was not available for comment.
Source: http://www.myfinances.co.uk/cut-your-bills/2013/06/29/former-tesco-chairman-maclaurin-takes-swipe-at-leahy-s-legac
TAHO $14.15 2.05
16.94%*Delayed - data as of Jun. 28, 2013
Tahoe Resources Inc [TAHO] is traded on New York Stock Exchange in USA. It is located in Reno, NV and employs 447 people. The company currently falls under 'Mid-Cap' category with current market capitalization of 2.06 B. Tahoe Resources Inc conducts business under Basic Materials sector and is part of Industrial Metals and Minerals industry. This company has 145.7 M outstanding shares of which 685.9 K shares are at this time shorted by private and institutional investors with about 7.6 trading days to cover.
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1 Month Beta 0.93
Highest Price: 15.17
Lowest Price: 12.05
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The median price of Tahoe for the period between Thu, May 30, 2013 and Sat, Jun 29, 2013 is 13.94 with a coefficient of variation of 6.73. The daily time series for the period is distributed with a sample standard deviation of 0.92, arithmetic mean of 13.74, and mean deviation of 0.74. The Stock received some media coverage during the period.
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Newedge USA Chief U.S. Credit, Equity and Policy Strategist Larry McDonald discusses U.S. and emerging markets on Bloomberg Television's "Lunch Money." (Source: Bloomberg)
On today's "The Roundup," Alix Steel, Dominic Chu and Julie Hyman wrap up the day's top market stories on Bloomberg Television's "Street Smart." (Source: Bloomberg)
Bloomberg’s Trish Regan, Dominic Chu and Adam Johnson report on today’s ten most important stocks including Nike, GameStop and BlackBerry. (Source: Bloomberg)
The Church of England is backing a bid for hundreds of branches being offloaded by Royal Bank of Scotland, raising the prospect of a new, ethical bank on the high street.
The Church Commissioners, who manage the Church's investments, are helping to fund a consortium led by the former banker and trade minister Lord Davies looking to take control of 315 RBS branches.
With investment decisions by the Church Commissioners taking into account the advice of the Church of England's Ethical Investment Advisory Group, this would suggest consumers will have a new, ethical banking option if the consortium is successful.
That would be a fillip for ethical financial firms following last week's forced bailout of the Co-op Bank.
RBS is selling the branches after being ordered to get rid of them by the European Commission as a consequence of being bailed out by taxpayers. They were due to be sold to Santander, but the £1.65bn deal collapsed last October more than two years after being agreed.
As well as the Church Commissioners, the consortium contains the private-equity firms Corsair – of which Lord Davies is a partner and vice-chairman – and Centerbridge, plus Standard Life, and the City veteran Lord Rothschild's investment trust, RIT Capital.
There are believed to be two other interested groups still in the running for the business: a tie-up between private-equity company AnaCap Financial Partners and US giant Blackstone, as well as a collection of more than 20 asset management firms led by Andrew Higginson, a former finance director of Tesco.
Earlier this week, Virgin Money's chief executive, Jayne-Anne Gadhia, said it was "totally out of the running" for the business.
The Church of England and RBS declined to comment.
The Church of England already holds a small stake in Barclays, and criticised the bank in its annual report last month, saying it had "repeatedly let down society with its conduct".
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has become a major figure in the struggle to reshape Britain's banking sector due to his position on the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.
He clashed with RBS's chief executive, Stephen Hester, last November in the role, asking: "What is the duty of an enormous bank like yours – approaching 100 per cent of GDP, well into the hundreds of billions of pounds – what is your duty to society, and why didn't you mention it?"
On the side of angels
No pornography, arms or booze are some of the guidelines by which the Church Commissioners' investment decisions are made. Advice is taken from the Church of England's Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG), which was behind the Church's decision last year to sell its stake in News Corporation in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal. The EIAG entered into a year of talks with News Corp, and put forward recommendations, but in the end said the media giant had not "brought about sufficient change".
source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/churchbacked-bid-for-rbs-arm-could-herald-creation-of-ethical-bank-on-high-street-8677708.html
LONDON – The British government’s long-awaited sale of its stakes in the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Lloyds Banking Group is inching closer.
UK Financial Investments, the organization that manages the holdings on behalf of the British government, has asked investment banks to make their pitches to help sell the stakes in the two lenders, which both received multibillion-dollar bailouts during the financial crisis.The tender offer, released on Thursday, comes as the future of the government’s holding in both banks is at a crossroads.
The banks have shed billions of dollars of assets, reduced their exposure to risky assets and, in the case of the Royal Bank of Scotland, slashed its investment banking unit to refocus on its retail operations. British taxpayers own a 39 percent stake in Lloyds and a 82 percent holding in the Royal Bank Scotland.Earlier this month, George Osborne, the country’s chancellor of the Exchequer, said the government was “actively considering options for share sales in Lloyds,” though he played down a similar offloading of Royal Bank of Scotland shares. Other local lawmakers have called for the breakup of the Royal Bank of Scotland to separate the firm’s toxic assets from its healthy banking operations.
By inviting investment banks to help sell the British taxpayers’ stakes in the two lenders, UK Financial Investments has moved the ball forward on the privatizations, though questions remain over how long the eventually share sale will take.
The tender, for which pitches must be submitted by July 8, asks investment banks to apply for four roles in the pending process: bookrunner, co-lead manager, capital markets adviser and financial adviser. Last year, Deutsche Bank helped UK Financial Investments to sell its stake in struggling British lender Northern Rock to Richard Branson’s Virgin Money.
The potential privatization of the banks is likely to be highly contentious, as local politicians and analysts continue to battle over what to do with British taxpayers’ stakes. Some British lawmakers have called for the shares to be sold directly to retail customers to allow them to benefit from any potential increase in the firms’ future share prices. A similar process in the 1980s led many British taxpayers to buy shares in former state-owned companies like the energy utility British Gas.
Lloyds is likely to be the first to be privatized, as its current share price is above the government’s breakeven price of 61.20 pence, or 93 cents. Shares in the Royal Bank of Scotland, however, are still trading 33 percent below what the British government says it needs to recoup its investment.
On Friday, Lloyds’ shares rose 1.6 percent, to 63.88 pence, in early afternoon trading in London, while the Royal Bank of Scotland’s stock price traded up slightly.
The prospect of the British government selling its stake in the Royal Bank of Scotland took a hit earlier this month when its chief executive, Stephen Hester, abruptly announced that he would leave the bank by the end of the year.
Mr. Hester had been widely praised for overseeing the bank’s restructuring, though the timing of any potential share sale had become highly politicized ahead of Britain’s general election to be held in 2015.
The bank’s board said they had asked Mr. Hester to step down so that they could appoint a new leader to oversee the privatization process, which could take the rest of the decade to complete.
source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/british-government-takes-step-in-selling-stakes-of-bailed-out-banks/?_r=0
