Marks & Spencer chair to shareholders: 'We're on a burning platform'

The chair of M&S has warned of the existential
threat faced by the hight street giant.
Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

The chairman of Marks & Spencer has given his starkest warning yet about existential threat faced by the high street giant as he refused to rule out further store closures and job losses.

“This business is on a burning platform,” said Archie Norman, who took over as M&S’s chairman last year. “We don’t have a God-given right to exist and unless we change and develop this company the way we want to, in decades to come there will be no M&S.”

Norman’s language echoed that of Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop in 2011, when the mobile phone firm was facing annihilation by smartphones. He said the retailer is in the first phase of a five-year turnaround that involves first getting the company to acknowledge the serial management failings that have resulted in years of falling clothing sales and declining profits.

By Zoe Wood.

Full story at Yahoo News.