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The man from the Pru has gone to the supermarket, where a demoralised staff and a dwindling number of customers await him. The new chief executive is Sainsbury's last throw in a game it used to win but now looks close to losing for good. Nigel Cope assesses its chances of survival
Down at your local branch of Sainsbury's next month it will be back to basics with Sir Peter Davis. Clean sheets and new beginnings have been a strong feature of the man from the Pru's approach in recent years. He chaired the Government's New Deal task force, came squeaky clean about Prudential's pension mis-selling and was also involved in the Basic Skills Agency. And, of course, you don't get nearer genesis than an Egg.
A return to first principles at Sainsbury's is thought long overdue by many weary shareholders, not least the Sainsbury family, which still holds 39% of the stock and is, therefore, not quite so Croesus-like as a few years ago. Davis, a big, well-connected bruiser, who began his career selling jukeboxes from the back of a car, may be the man to do it. He's even had 10 years in the Sainsbury trenches - back when it was Tesco which took all the artillery punishment - from 1976 to 1986, before his career progression stalled. Those now battle-scarred Sainsbury's staff must be hoping, nevertheless, that we do not see a repeat performance of his fronting the Prudential's advertising. Another well-known face pushing a trolley around the aisles would be more than they could bear.
The run-up to his appointment was grim. In October, the company's 20 million price-cutting campaign, aimed at wresting back the initiative in the supermarket wars, was comprehensively trounced by Tesco's campaign worth 10 times as much. Next, Sainsbury's tried to reinvigorate its core business with a boardroom reshuffle, but the move was ridiculed by the City as a hopeless fudge. Then in November, a 30% fall in first-half profits, to 297 million, demonstrated that the group was continuing to lose ground to Tesco, as well as confidence and support. 'You almost feel sorry for them,' said one City analyst. 'They can't seem to do anything right.'
Even the common touch of the fly-on-the-wall TV documentary...