New Morrisons chief executive sacks five major managers in first week

After a week on the job, the new chief executive of Morrison’s has already completely transformed upper management by reportedly axing five major bosses.

According to Sky News, on Tuesday it was announced that David Potts, who officially started his post as the supermarket chain’s top boss on 16 March, wanted to make operations much more efficient. Morrisons revealed the five people in question were to “step down and leave the company”.

The managers are group customer marketing & digital director Nick Collard, group retail director Martyn Fletcher, group property and strategy director Gordon Mowat, group logistics director Neal Austin and convenience managing director Nigel Robertson.

Morrisons have struggled to compete with other major supermarket chains in recent times, and at the start of the month the Bradford-based companyannounced the foreclosure of 23 stores after reporting a pretax loss of £792m for the year ending 1st February - compared to a loss of £176m for the same period last year.

Morrison’s difficulties were clearly indicated last year when it unveiled the new strategy of spending £1bn on price cuts over three years to compensate for the loss of customers to Aldi and Lidl.

Mr Potts said: “I will now be constructing a leaner management board, with the aim of simplifying and speeding up the business. I would like to thank Nick, Martyn, Neil, Nigel and Gordon for their service to Morrisons”.

Mr Potts, the ex-Tesco boss, was hired shortly after Morrison’s previous chief executive, Dalton Philips, was sacked in January following poor a trading performance over the Christmas holidays.