Allan Leighton

Leighton attended Magdalen College School, Brackley and graduated from Oxford Polytechnic.

Leighton joined Lloyds Bank as a cashier in 1972. He left to join Mars UK in Slough as a salesman in 1974[2] and worked at the company for eighteen years, where his colleagues included Justin King, David Cheesewright and Richard Baker. He was appointed General Sales Manager for the UK Grocery Division in 1987 (the youngest director in the company worldwide),[1] and subsequently, managing director of Mars in Ireland and Portugal.[3]

Leighton says he owes a lot to the Mars brothers, who gave him the practical basis for much of what he did at Asda: they would fly economy, hire a car and inspect a factory without warning before management arrived, talking to workers to get a sense of what was going on.[4]

Leaving Mars as marketing and sales director for Pedigree Petfoods, he joined Archie Norman's management team at Asda as Marketing Director in March 1992. He attended Harvard University's six-week Advanced Management Program.[5]

In 2009, it was reported that an £18bn merger would happen between Asda and Kingfisher plc, which would see Leighton become deputy chief executive of the enlarged group.[6] However, the merger fell through and the company was sold to the US-based Wal-Mart for £6.2 billion in the same year.[7]

In 2009, Leighton also became deputy chairman of Leeds United Football Club and stayed on the board until 2003.[8]

Leighton left Asda in November 2000 and has held a number of different business roles, including:

• Non-executive Chairman of Lastminute.com from 2000-2004[3]
• Serving as the Royal Mail's longest-serving chairman from 2002-2008[9][10]
• Appointed chairman The Co-operative Group in 2015[11]
• Appointed chairman of Simba Sleep in August 2018[12]
• Advising friend Sir James Dyson, where he is on the board of Dyson[13]
• Non-executive director at BSkyB[14]

Other posts have included non-executive at housebuilder Wilson Connolly, and power company Scottish Power,[15] and chairman of fitness chain Cannons Health Clubs, where he wrote a weekly internal newsletter entitled "thoughts from the Jacuzzi."

Currently based half of the time in Toronto, Ontario, he is advising retail magnate Galen Weston and his son on Canadian retail chain Loblaw Companies (for which he is being paid C$1million),[16] and is deputy chairman of Selfridges & Co. On 21 April 2008, Loblaw Companies announced that Leighton will take on the role of president of the company.

Leighton was appointed chairman of Yorkshire-based broadcast and broadband technology company, Pace plc, on 21 June 2011. Leighton has made few television appearances, but is currently the "mentor" in Five's show Breaking into Tesco. In February 2015, The Co-operative Group appointed Leighton as its new independent non-executive chairman, he became the first independent chairman for the business.[17] He received a £3.4 million payoff from his previous employers Pandora, where he was chief executive from July 2013 to August 2014.[18]

Leighton was formally chairman of Business in the Community,[2] where he was succeeded by Jeremy Darroch.