John Stredwick Talks Informally to Terry Leahy at the Tesco AGM

Our then chair, John Stredwick, attended the Tesco AGM on Friday, June 29 in London. There were over 2000 people present and, after the formal reports from the Chairman and Terry Leahy, Chief Executive, there were two hours of questions (mostly hostile, but not all) from the floor on a variety of topics. Some of these were serious (Tesco strategy on expanding overseas, treatment of workers in Bangladeshi garment supply companies) and some really quite trivial concerning some minute details of the operation of the club card system and the suggestion that the AGM is held in the afternoon so that shareholders can get cheap rail fares.

Hundreds wanted to ask questions and John was one of the unlucky ones, but there were questions from the Gerrards Cross and the Sheringham campaign groups. The response from the chair was that there was often a great deal of fuss before the store opened but it was all forgotten when the store was opened and everybody went and shopped there. In fact the Chairman was quite dismissive.

After the meeting was over, John had a brief word with Terry Leahy. It could not be said that he was too enthusiastic but he listened to what John said, asked a couple of questions (what are the residents really worried about) and then said ‘Well, you have given me something to think about, now I will give you something to think about – if the residents are against the Tesco Express, then they don’t have to shop there and it won’t be successful’ So what is the problem?’ John responded by saying that Tesco had the power to stop the competition from the small shops through their pricing policy and we would finish with no choice. I went on to say that I looked forward to hearing from him about the meeting I had requested. (The Chairman had stressed on four or five occasions – the best way to make progress is to meet with us and then work with us to solve the problems – as Tesco is with an organisation against turtle-based food sales in china, for example, switching from wild turtles to farmed ones).

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