Five years later, where are they all? Well, surprise surprise, Rose is bouncing around the boss’s office at M&S, Terry Green is heading Tesco’s clothing division, and Philip Green, foiled by Rose in his bid to buy M&S, has made billions gobbling up Arcadia and running it with BHS. They all continue to circle each other — nothing stands still in retailing.
But last week was a good one for Rose. His trading update for M&S, showing the chain’s best Christmas figures for three years, impressed the City and media alike. No wonder he is looking pleased as Punch again — it is his natural demeanour — back at the firm that gave him his first job in retailing. Maybe, just maybe, after two years in the top slot, he can offer troubled M&S a brighter future.
He has even mended relations with Philip Green, whose attempt to bid for M&S ended so bitterly in 2004. “Yeah, we’re okay now. I was talking to him this morning,” says Rose, sitting in his ninth-floor eyrie at M&S’s Paddington base in west London.
“You know Philip, he likes to win, that’s why he’s successful. Me too, but we have different outlooks on life. He’s always ribbing me” — Rose drops an octave to a gravelly Green voice — ‘how come you’ll work for one year for what I earn in interest in a week?’ ”
Rose laughs. While not as rich as Green, he still made many millions from the buyout at Arcadia. But for him, M&S, where he worked for 17 years before joining Burton, was never about money.
“I came back for two reasons. I love the business to bits, and I had to prove to myself that I could do it.”
And he looks okay on it, greyer than five years ago, but still trim at 56, his featureless face round and pale, carrying a hint of his Russian lineage. Rose’s grandparents were White Russian émigrés who fled to China after the 1917 revolution. His real family name is Bryantzeff — his dad, ex-RAF and civil servant, changed it. But that’s another story.
And if you are not careful you can always get diverted by Rose’s non-stop chat. He says he prides himself on being open with press and public alike — “I’ve never lied to the press, never abused them, I always return calls” — but you have to watch what you get sucked into.
“I was in the Ivy last night,” says Rose, “and a woman came up to my table, said she loved what we are doing with M&S food, but she had an issue with the tomatoes. I said, ‘Fine, I’ll look at it in the morning.’ I’ve got her card somewhere . . .”
He starts pulling out credit cards and bits of paper from his pockets, spilling them on the table, muttering “must remember that meeting about tomatoes”. Then he grins and asks, “What were we talking about?”
This playfulness can make Rose easy to underestimate but those who have worked with him say he is deadly serious underneath. “Stuart’s got an eye for product, strong people skills, a nice style, and he’s no mug,” says Andy Higginson, finance director at Tesco and a former colleague from Burton. “Given that he knows the business from before, he’s probably the only guy with the skill set to have taken it on.”
Rose is certainly more approachable than many recent M&S chiefs. That is deliberate. The retailer has had a dreadful time in the media and Rose is working hard to redress this.
The headlines last week show the effort is paying off. Nobody believes that the recovery at M&S is complete — certainly not Rose — but at least he has got people feeling good about the stores again. That is reflected in better morale internally too.
And morale, says Rose, is crucial if the retailer is going to achieve sustained growth, rather than just a few good quarters, followed by a slump — as has happened before. Forget the competition, forget the conditions. He wants his staff to believe in what is possible.
“Do you think Terry Leahy and his Tesco team in Cheshunt are saying, ‘Oh we’ve got 30% market share, we’d better stop now?’ No, they say ‘We’ve got 30% and we’re gonna get 35%.’
“But we come in here at M&S and say, ‘Oh, it’s very difficult, yunno . . .’ That’s the mentality I inherited. The biggest single change I am trying to bring about here is in attitude and can-do. This is a massive organisation, 65,000 employees. I can’t do this alone. It’s teamwork.”
Holding the top team together has been a priority for Rose. He brought two lieutenants with him, backroom specialist Charles Wilson and marketing brain Steven Sharp.
Wilson has already left to head Booker, the cash-and-carry chain. Unfortunate, says Rose.
George Davies, who oversees M&S’s successful Per Una range, also detached himself, but was persuaded to stick around by the famous Rose charm. What with the Green bid, and rows over who would chair M&S, it has been a rollercoaster two years.
Throughout it all, says Rose, he has just tried to get M&S back to basics — products, stores and service.
Isn’t that what all retailing is about? “Of course,” he laughs. But M&S had allowed everything to get too complicated. “We’re traders, I say to staff. We buy for 50p, we sell for £1. That’s all we have to do.”
He is being disingenuous, of course, and has made swift changes to the organisation he inherited. There were too many divisions doing their own thing, nobody agreed on what the business was about, products no longer seemed good value to consumers. “All I’ve done is dusted down what worked in the past, made it relevant for today and, hey presto, it’s worked. Because the founders weren’t stupid.”
But where is he going to find fresh growth? Provided he can stabilise what he has got, he agrees he is going to have to look at new areas. Consumer electronics? John Lewis sells them. Tesco too. Rose won’t be drawn, but he does say this: he has 417 stores, a great brand and, if customers want it, why isn’t M&S selling it?
He also thinks M&S should look overseas again. “I think it is sad, if not a tragedy, that we ended our European business,” he says. Rose, remember, was once an executive in Paris for M&S Europe. That is unfinished business.
What drives him on? He doesn’t know. He has said in the past that his mother’s suicide when he was 24, just starting out at M&S, made him determined to prove that he was a winner. Sharp, who has worked with him for 17 years, says Rose is on a mission. “He wants to be the man who modernises M&S and leaves a legacy.”
He probably has a point to prove to Philip and Terry Green too. Comment about how much more efficient Arcadia is under Philip Green has clearly hurt.
And Rose’s reputation as “a bit of a Champagne Charlie” — fond of the good life, flies his own plane, likes the ladies — still dogs him, even though he says he is “too tired” to go out much, and he flew his plane only three times last year.
But the old stuff sticks. Former colleague Terry Green used to joke that he would do the hard work while dandy Rose could charm the City and “look pretty in the pictures”.
Rose’s response now? He smiles, opens his arms and shrugs, as if to say, hey, I’m running this, where’s Terry? Answer enough, but he knows there’s a long way to go yet.
Vital statistics
Born: March 17, 1949
Marital status: separated, with one son and one daughter
School: Bootham, York
First job: administration assistant at BBC
Salary package: £850,000
Homes: central London and Suffolk
Car: grey BMW 7 Series
Favourite book: any biography
Favourite music: classical
Favourite film: The African Queen
Favourite gadget: Rockwell Commander plane
Last holiday: Sardinia
Interests: wine, flying
Stuart Rose's Working Day
THE Marks & Spencer chief executive wakes at 6.15 am at his home in London’s West End. By 7.20 Stuart Rose has been picked up by his driver, and is on the way to a breakfast meeting, or straight into the office.
Once at M&S’s Paddington base, he goes into meetings. “I have about 12 or 13 people directly reporting to me,” says Rose, “so it’s a constant battle to get any free time.” He works through lunch and will only stop at 6.30 pm, when he will meet contacts for drinks at George, a club in Mayfair.
He usually dines at the Ivy, Wolseley or Caprice in Piccadilly. “Mostly business dinners.” He avoids the other favourite of retailers, the Cipriani. “It’s full of strange people after 9 pm,” he says. “Large contingents of very blonde ladies – if you know what I mean.”
Working space
STUART ROSE works from a modest, white-walled office on the ninth floor of M&S’s headquarters in Paddington, London. The building, designed by Richard Rogers, is determinedly modern, built of glass and steel, with glass lifts outside, and long windows looking into internal atriums.
Rose’s office has a modern desk by the window, and a meeting table and chairs by the door. One wall is decorated with 58 framed cartoons mentioning M&S, many of them about Philip Green’s bid. A photo of Helena Christensen, from an old Dorothy Perkins ad campaign, and a sketch by Rose's wife of Chateau Margaux, decorate the other wall.
His finance director Ian Dyson and marketing chief Steven Sharp have identical offices either side. There are no clothes or products on view. “I don’t need a rack to show I’ve got retail credentials,” says Rose.
