Britain's troubled Co-operative group today said that it has accepted Euan Sutherland's resignation as chief executive.
Chief financial officer Richard Pennycook has been appointed as interim chief executive.
Sutherland offered to resign after a turbulent 10 months in the job, by way of a letter in which he reportedly said that the mutual is now 'ungovernable'.
Sutherland's decision to leave the Co-op, whose businesses include a bank, supermarkets and funeral homes, sparked an emergency board meeting to discuss the restructuring of the Group's governance.
His resignation follows an outburst on Facebook Sunday night, where he accused unnamed board members of leaking details of his £3.7 million pay packet to the media.
"We seem to have an individual, or individuals, determined to undermine me personally, my team and the rest of the group board regardless of the uncertainty and disruption this causes to our 90,000 colleagues and our supportive members,” he wrote on the company's social media account.
He added: “I wish I could promise you that this kind of occurrence will not happen again. You deserve to hear information in a proper, orderly and considered fashion. But we appear to have disaffected people who are determined to make life difficult and embarrassing for The Co-operative at a time when what we need most are professionalism and loyalty to the business.”
Mr Sutherland, a Scot who trained at Coca Cola, and who has almost two decades of retail experience, was due to announce changes to his executive team on 17 March ahead of the group's full-year results on 26 March.
Co-op chair Ursula Lidbetter said she accepted Mr Sutherland’s resignation with ‘deep regret’.
She added: ‘Euan’s resignation must now act as a catalyst for the real and necessary change which the group must go through.’
© 2014 - European Supermarket Magazine by Enda Dowling
To sign up to ESM’s weekly e-zine newsletter, send an email with the subject: ‘Subscribe ESM news’ to [email protected]
