Ken Hanna, hugely respected in the City after a distinguished business career, was named a non-executive director of Tesco yesterday. The move will trigger speculation that when David Reid, the chairman, who is 61, eventually steps down, Mr Hanna will take his place — although Tesco is anxious to distance itself from such talk.

Tesco's boardroom has had more than its fair share of difficulties this year with the resignation in April, as a non-executive director, of Carolyn McCall, chief executive of Guardian Media Group. She walked away during a bitter legal dispute between the supermarket chain and The Guardian.

The retailer faces some tough challenges in coming years, the most important of which will be identifying a successor to Sir Terry Leahy, its still-youthful chief executive.

And Mr Hanna, 55, whose communications skills are highly regarded, would be ideally placed to take soundings from Tesco's City shareholders on just such a sensitive issue. Most recently, he was chief financial officer of Cadbury, where he won respect for the company's performance and his expertise on strategic issues. He was instrumental in the demerger of the beverages arm and in important acquisitions such as those of Adams, which took Cadbury into chewing gum in a big way, and Green & Black, the cult chocolate brand.

Before joining Cadbury in 2004, Mr Hanna was a partner at Compass Partners International, the private equity firm founded by John Clark, the former chief executive of BET, the business services group.

He is also well remembered in the City for his work at Dalgety, where he was finance director and then chief executive from 1997 to 1999. Mr Hanna dismembered the company, a rambling conglomerate whose activities had included pet food, flour and pig breeding, realising £1 billion for shareholders. A chartered accountant by training, Mr Hanna began his career in audit for Coopers and Lybrand before joining Black & Decker as group treasurer. He then worked for Max Factor as group financial controller and Avis, the car rental company, where he spent a decade, the final four years as finance director. He spent four years as group finance director at United Distillers, part of Guinness, before going to Dalgety.

Also joining Tesco as a non-executive director yesterday was Jacqueline Tammenoms Bakker, an alumna of Shell and McKinsey, who, more recently, has worked for the Dutch Government.