Tesco's new finance director is to begin work immediately after the troubled grocery chain struck a deal for his early release from Marks & Spencer.
Alan Stewart resigned from the department store retailer in July but the terms of departure meant he was not due to start at Tesco until December 1.
However, with Tesco in crisis following yesterday's revelations of an accounting error which inflated profits by £250 million, the two parties have agreed a deal for Mr Stewart to join the supermarket's board from today.
Tesco has been without a finance chief since Laurie McIlwee officially left the business earlier this month. The supermarket's new chief executive, Dave Lewis, only started in the job at the beginning of September.
Mr Stewart began his career in investment banking with HSBC before joining Thomas Cook, where he was appointed UK chief executive in 2001. He also worked for WH Smith prior to his move to Marks & Spencer in 2010.
Tesco has suspended four executives in its UK business while it investigates the over-statement of profits. The inquiry will look into the way it treated rebates paid by suppliers and whether they were reported in the right time period.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article