Tesco chief tips retail power league

Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy was today named the UK’s most powerful retailer after topping a poll ahead of Top Shop-to-Bhs tycoon Philip Green.

Sir Terry, who recently led the supermarket chain to annual profits of more than £2bn (€3m), also forced Marks & Spencer chief executive Stuart Rose into third place in the study by industry magazine Retail Week.

The list, which was compiled with input from leading experts in the retail sector, placed the leader of Icelandic private equity firm Baugur in fourth place after he snapped up companies ranging from Karen Millen and Oasis to Iceland firm Big Food Group. Jon Asgeir Johannesson founded Baugur with his father in 1989 and has cashed in on a boom in private equity deals in the UK.

Sir Terry, who joined the grocery giant as a marketing executive in 1979 and became chief executive in 1997, was described as the “driving force behind Tesco’s remarkable growth”.

It added: “The supermarket chain is, without doubt, the biggest success story in UK retail in recent memory.”

Sir Ken Morrison’s “no-nonsense Yorkshire style” that helped turn his firm into one of the country’s biggest supermarket chains gained him a place at number eight, although he was beaten by Andy Bond, the new head of rival Asda, who was ranked sixth.

Other names making it into the top 50 included New Look’s Phil Wrigley, who was promoted to chief executive after the company went private a year ago, Boots chief executive Richard Baker, and Jacqueline Gold, head of the Ann Summers chain.