Asda pauses search for chief executive successor
Asda has temporarily halted its search for a new boss to succeed Roger Burnley, with co-owner Mohsin Issa understood to be overseeing day-to-day operations in the interim.
The company was bought by the billionaire Issa brothers with their private equity partner TDR last year and CEO Roger Burnley left the business in the summer over strategy disagreements.
The company had been looking for a new leader since last March given that Burnley had planned to leave. The Times reported on Monday that Mohsin Issa “is said to have been spending the bulk of his time at the grocer’s headquarters in Leeds”. Any new CEO coming in would have had to run a chain in which the owners had a huge say and the newspaper said it would be difficult to find a respected executive who wouldn’t have ultimate control of strategy.
Sources “close to the process” have said that the CEO search had been “paused and that the present structure was being left as it was for the time being”.
It is understood that executives from Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons and Pets at Home have all turned down the role.
