Martin Vander Weyer: Why I’d rather run M&S than Tesco

This first working week of January is apparently the time when we’re most likely to think about a change of career; and last Friday was the 30th anniversary of the launch of the FTSE100 index of leading companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. The combination of those two diary items made me wonder what choice I would make if the job genie swooshed out of the pantomime lamp and told me I could re-invent myself as chief executive of a FTSE100 company.

Given recovering consumer confidence — and everything to play for in the ‘bricks and clicks’ treasure hunt for the best mix of online and physical offerings — it might be fun to run a big retailer, and even more stimulating to take charge of an underperformer such as Marks & Spencer or Tesco rather than a current favourite such as Next. But would I rather be M&S boss Marc Bolland, staring at a set of ‘Christmas sales disaster’ headlines, or Tesco’s Philip Clarke, knocked back by failure in the US and struggling to live up to the expansive record of his predecessor Terry Leahy?

Both companies are among the elite 19 that have never dropped out of the FTSE100 these past three decades, which says something for their enduring appeal to investors. But the choice between them is easy enough: genie, let me loose on M&S, where whatever mistakes I may make (like those of successive bosses since the era of Sir Rick Greenbury in the 1990s) will be offset by continuing public affection for the brand and belief in the quality, if not the fashion appeal, of its products — so trusted that it still supplies a third of all our underwear.

Tesco, by contrast, strikes me as a business-school case study of a brand that has lost all positive emotional connection to its customers.