Shore Capital welcomes new board members at Tesco

6th Oct 2014 12:11

Monday's appointment of two highly-regarded consumer-based directors at Tesco is a "light beam of good news [...] in a sea of darkness", according to Shore Capital.The broker's Clive Black and Darren Shirley said that shareholders will hope that recent developments, such as a Financial Conduct Authority investigation into Tesco's accounting and a string of profit warnings, represent the "nadir".Richard Cousins, who has been the group chief executive officer (CEO) of Compass since 2006, will join Tesco's board in November along with Mikael Ohlsson, who was until September 2013 the CEO and president of IKEA Group."Non-executive directors rarely put pennies into the tills but in this instance we welcome the joint appointments and hope that it represents the recommencement of more effective governance of Tesco," the analysts said."In this respect we see scope for further work embracing a larger executive component on the board in time, an evolution of the present non-executive team and the appointment of an appropriate chair person."Black and Shirley, who kept a 'hold' rating on the supermarket group, said they are now awaiting the development of Tesco's trading strategy under new CEO Dave Lewis.The stock was up 2.1% at 175.7p by 12:32.