Tesco non-food boss Per Bank to leave

Bank, who has held various other roles at Tesco including chief executive of the Hungarian business and is leaving for family reasons, will join Dansk Supermarked at the start of April.

Nigel Jones will replace Bank as UK commercial director for general merchandise and clothing and join the UK Board.

Jones joined Tesco in 1991 and has worked in general management roles and has been UK distribution director for the UK for the past three years.

Analysts at Shore Capital said Bank would be a loss to Tesco.

Shore analyst Clive Black maintained: “For Tesco we deem this to be a reasonably disappointing departure as the core chain seeks to come to terms with a period of relative underperformance through the involvement of talent imported from its international markets.

“For the UK business, especially in non-food, a pre-condition of improvement could be considered a settled management team and in this respect group chief executive Philip Clarke’s efforts are not helped by the loss of Mr Bank nor Laura Wade-Gery a year earlier to Marks & Spencer.

“That said, Tesco has a strong pool of talent and it has the capability to attract outside folk too. No doubt there will be no shortage of potentially effective replacements.”