Tesco strengthens board with appointment of former BP man

The firm also said yesterday that non-executive director Gareth Bullock would retire from the main board on March 5 but remain on the board of Tesco Bank.

Tesco’s board composition has changed dramatically in the wake of last year’s four profit warnings and a £263m profit overstatement that sent its shares to a 14-year low and drew stinging criticism of the board’s financial oversight.

Richard Broadbent will be succeeded as Tesco chairman by John Allan on March 1. A new chief executive, Dave Lewis, and finance director, Alan Stewart, were appointed last year.

Further non-executive changes were made last week.

Grote was BP’s CFO from 2002 to 2011 and is also a former colleague of Lewis at Unilever, having served as a non-exec there for nine years.

Last week, Severn Trent chief executive Liv Garfield stepped down as a non-executive on the Tesco board to focus on her full-time role, while Jacqueline Tammenoms Bakker, who has been a director for six years, retired.

That leaves Tesco with just one woman on a board of 12.