THE retail veteran Lord Rose of Monewden, former boss of Marks & Spencer, has been appointed as chairman of the Issa brothers’ petrol station empire as it seeks to allay corporate governance concerns before a potential multibillion-pound stock market listing this year.
Lord Rose, 71, has taken the non-executive role at EG Group with immediate effect and is due to step down as chairman of the FTSE 100 online grocer Ocado in May.
EG Group, which is registered in Jersey, is owned by Mohsin and Zuber Issa, billionaire businessmen from Blackburn, and the private equity firm TDR Capital, who last year agreed to acquire Asda for £6.8 billion from the US retail giant Walmart.
The debt-fuelled takeover of Asda, Britain’s third largest supermarket chain, has brought scrutiny of the brothers and EG, which, until the appointment of Lord Rose and of John Carey, a former executive at BP and at the Abu Dhabi oil group Andoc, as a non-executive in November, had no independent board members.
Lord Rose, a Conservative life peer, has previously been involved in his own corporate governance contentions. His dual chief executive-chairman role at Marks & Spencer triggered concerns from shareholders in 2008 because it breached corporate governance rules.
EG Group has not had a chairman for four years after the former Asda boss Tony Denunzio left shortly after a merger between EG Group and European Forecourt Retail Group, TDR’s European petrol business.
Concerns about the strength of EG Group’s board were heightened when it emerged in October that Deloitte had resigned as its auditor because of concerns over the group’s governance and lack of internal controls. KPMG has since been appointed.
The Issa brothers created EG Group from a single petrol station in Bury in 2001. It operates convenience stores, food service outlets and petrol stations at more than 6,000 sites in 10 countries.
Lord Rose said he had been asked to “develop appropriate governance structures for a business of this scale”. He added: “The business has exciting development plans and exceptional prospects in the years to come.”
His other board roles include his chairmanship of Zenith Automotive, a vehicle leasing company, Majid Al Futtaim, a Middle Eastern retail and leisure group and RM2 International, a struggling formerly listed pallet manufacturer.
He is also an adviser to the private equity firm Bridgepoint and was chairman of the retailer Fatface until September.
