Sears Holdings Corp, the department store chain, said today that its chief executive would step down at the end of this week, in the face of a slump in sales.

Aylwin Lewis, who is also the firm’s president, will resign from the board and is to be replaced on an interim basis by W. Bruce Johnson, currently executive vice president of supply chain and operations.

Edward Lampert, the company’s chairman, said last week that the firm’s organisational structure needed to be reshaped to improve performance.

The 121-year-old retailer, which owns 3,800 Sears and Kmart stores in the United States and Canada, announced that it would post below-forecast fourth-quarter earnings and that falling sales would push its profit down as much as 57 per cent.

The firm said that it expected to post earnings of between $350 million and $470 million for the quarter ending February 2, equivalent to between $2.59 and $3.48 per share, well below the $4.43 forecasted by analysts. The firm had earned $820 million in the fourth quarter last year.

Mr Lampert said in a statement: “We are entering a new phase in Sears’ evolution as a multichannel retailer, as reflected by the new operational structure we recently announced, and the board has determined that now is the right time to put in place new leadership to take the company forward.”

Mr Johnson joined Kmart in 2003 as senior vice president of supply chain and operations and assumed his current role after Sears purchased Kmart. He was previously a supply chain executive at Carrefour, the French supermarket chain.

Sears shares, which reached a high of $195.18 in April, closed on Friday at $99.00.

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