The Guardian has just reported that:
The Co-operative Group was thrown deeper into crisis on Tuesday after the new boss Euan Sutherland threatened to resign in the face of opposition to his reforms for the mutually owned chain of supermarkets, funeral homes and banks.
So having already grabbed a £3.6 million salary from a battered and bruised Board of Directors he now wants to usurp their power as well. It is as a result very clear that Mr Sutherland has no understanding of the responsibility owed by a director of a cooperative to the members that they represent.
I have a simple suggestion for Mr Sutherland. He has very obviously taken a job that he does not understand, which is way beyond his abilities, and pay scale, and where he has no comprehension of the ethos of the organisation that he has been put in charge of. I suggest he walks away very quietly, and without compensation.
I fear that will not happen.
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Sutherland is quite rightly taking flak for his outburst and huge guaranteed-bonus salary but I fear people might forget it was time-served insiders (plus Neville Richardson) that have brought down this organisation.
The self-serving cliques that are killing the Co-Op are probably inevitable in an organisation where a huge percentage of its owners, i.e. the public have zero interest or contact with the oversight of the executive.
Ian, as a member of the Co-Op who probably comes into your description of the owners, you have a point. Mind you, is this any different from the lack of influence and oversight shown by shareholders of the banks, or any of the other many scandal hit financial institutions?
They didn’t do a very good job, and still aren’t, in stopping the excesses of bank chief executives.
As for the Co-Op, the curse of finance has claimed another victim.
I’ve been a member of the co-operative for closing in on ten years now, and perhaps it’s just me (an administrative error perhaps) but I don’t recall ever being consulted on board level or executive appointments. Certainly not in the way other mutual and/or professional bodies consult and engage with their memberships (The Nationwide and the Royal Society of Chemistry being the two such organizations I have direct experience of). As I say, maybe it’s a clerical error and I’m just not receiving my regular and engaging co-operative mail-shoots (as a customer of ‘The Cooperative’ Bank I certainly got the patronizing and vacuous ‘apology’ e-mail, but perhaps they’re administered independently), or maybe the Co-operative only really engages with it’s employee members and volunteers?
That said, whenever The Nationwide sends out a ballot for board members and/or executives I find myself rather under-qualified. I haven’t the time to educate myself of the proven skills and achievements of the candidates and incumbents (including anything they might have omitted from their ‘vote for me’ spiel). It’s almost as if I’m unqualified to (play a part in) appoint(ing) board members and executives for a large financial institution! Then again, from the state of the financial industry, who is these days! 😉
I recently received a condescending and insulting standard letter to customers from the Co-Op bank’s CEO, offering a platitudinous explanation of the bank’s issues and no real explanation of the stupidity, incompetence that has led to this place. Yet again the public have been let down by, as Ian says, ‘self-serving cliques’ – there is now nowhere else to go -another neo-lib triumph in the race to the bottom.
I had that too
And binned it in disgust
I wonder what now happens to the people he recruited to his management team, and who were also the beneficiaries of what to most of us appear to be extraordinary pay and bonus arrangements. How many of them also had a strop and never turned up for work on Monday?
Perhaps it’s also an opportunity to reinstate the Head of HR who was ‘exited’ (but not dismissed, I noted), with such a handsome golden goodbye. She could then actually attempt to earn what she has been paid.
She may also need to be a bit more thorough when she puts together the person spec for Sutherland’s replacement than she was when shortlisting (or headhunting) Sutherland, so that the Coop get someone with a bit more patience and staying power. Perhaps the current CE of John Lewis?
So much for the “all businesses should be run like Co-Op” trope……
There are 6,000 co-ops in the UK
One is having difficulty
Well at least it didn’t require bailing out by the state like certain other well known banks that weren’t co-operatives!
As for Euan Sutherland, the man is just one of the many invertebrates that are members of the ancient “Worshipful Company of Wealth Extractors” which strangely I can’t find listed with the other City of London livery companies!
But if its the largest its not good news for the co-op movement.