6th Oct 2014 06:40
LONDON (Alliance News) - Tesco PLC Monday moved to bolster its board, adding the chief executive of food services company Compass PLC and a former CEO of furniture and household goods retailer IKEA Group as non-executive directors.
Compass CEO Richard Cousins and former IKEA CEO and President Mikael Ohlsson will join Tesco's board on November 1.
Cousins has been CEO of Compass since 2006, prior to which he worked for 15 years at British building materials business BPB PLC. Cousins has also been non-executive director of consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC and Bank of Scotland.
Ohlsson worked for Swedish furniture giant IKEA for 34 years in a number of roles, including as managing director for various divisions and CEO and president of the group in 2009.
The appointment of the pair marks the first board additions since Tesco's new Chief Executive Dave Lewis took the helm at the start of last month, and comes amid investigations into the UK's largest supermarket chain after it admitted it had overstated its profit guidance for the first half of its financial year.
On September 22, Tesco saw about GBP2 billion wiped off its market capitalisation after it said it had overstated its first-half pretax profit guidance by GBP250 million. It has suspended four executives while it undertakes a thorough investigation into the issue.
Last week Tesco said regulator the Financial Conduct Authority had started a full investigation. Prior to that, the UK accountancy regulator the Financial Reporting Council, had said it was monitoring the situation closely, but would not act until Tesco's own investigation was completed.
Tesco could be facing fines if it is found to have broken accounting rules.
By Steve McGrath and Rowena Harris-Doughty; [email protected]; @stevemcgrath1
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