Tony Campbell shot into the limelight this weekend as a key figure in the £10.4 billion Qatari-backed bid for J Sainsbury.

At 57, Mr Campbell is a veteran retailer who spent two decades with Asda, most recently as the group’s deputy chief executive.

He has now been lined up by Delta Two, the consortium backed by the Qatari state investment fund, to chair Sainsbury if Delta succeeds in taking over the company.

At Asda during the 1990s, Mr Campbell was one of a team of executives – including Archie Norman and Allan Leighton – that turned the supermarket chain around from near-bankruptcy. The company had become overstretched after its 1989 acquisition of Gateway for £705 million and twice – in 1991 and 1993 – had to go to shareholders to raise money.

However, under Messrs Campbell, Norman and Leighton, the group refocused its efforts on offering the lowest prices of the big supermarket groups and subsequently won back customers in droves.

During that time, Mr Campbell worked closely with Justin King, now Sainsbury’s chief executive, who occupied a number of Asda posts in human resources, trading and retailing between 1994 and 2001.

The Delta Two consortium is expected to try to keep Mr King on board if it wins Sainsbury.

The Asda executives’ efforts were richly rewarded in 1999 when the company was snapped up by US giant Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailing group, for $10.8 billion.

Mr Campbell left Asda in 2001 and has since held a series of nonexecutive posts with companies including First Choice Holidays, TM Lewin, the shirtmaker, and White Company, a maker of luxury linen.

He has also served as nonexecutive chairman of Hobbs Headco, the women’s clothing and footwear retailer, and as a director of Alaska Food Diagnostics, a specialist in food-safety issues.

Delta Two’s bid for Sainsbury is far from assured and much depends on the views of the Sainsbury family, who are staunchly opposed to a highly-leveraged bid.

Last week, unions moved against the proposed takeover, raising questions about whether it could be in Britain’s interest to effectively let the Qatari state to win control of one of its biggest retailers.

David Mellor, the former Conservative MP and minister, has been advising Delta on several aspects of the bid.

Mr Campbell must be relishing the prospect of a return to the front line as chairman of one of Britain’s best-known high street stores.

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