CONTRACT EXTENSION EXPECTED
Brookes set to keep reins in Edcon drive
Australian Bernie Brookes must undo the damage done by his predecessors at the retail powerhouse, writes Ann Crotty
First order of business at next Tuesday’s inaugural meeting of the just-appointed Edcon board will be the extension of Bernie Brookes’s contract, which expires in September. Brookes’s reappointment on any terms seems a certainty. It would not be much of a stretch to say Edcon’s future lies in the Australian’s hands. It will be largely down to him to undo the damage wreaked on what was a retail powerhouse by another foreigner, German Jurgen Schreiber, and Bain Capital Partners, which appointed Schreiber to take over from Steve Ross in April 2011. In May 2015, news of Schreiber’s departure was apparently greeted with much relief by Edcon employees. A number of strategic blunders under his rule saw the group’s comparatively disappointing performance in the few years up to 2011 move into overdrive. The key take-out of it all was that in 2007 when Bain Capital Partners pulled off the private-equity deal, Edcon had a nonfood market share of 28%. That has been whittled downto 16%. Schreibe...
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