Analysts are divided on whether Woolworths CEO Ian Moir should fall on his sword after the retailer was forced to impair the value of its Australian department store chain, David Jones, by nearly R7bn. Moir, an expert in fashion retail, has been at the helm since 2010. But David Jones has been weak and outperformed by the food division in SA and Australia. One thing all analysts agree on is that top management is in dire need of a shake-up. Although Woolworths attributed the impairment to "the cyclical downturn and structural changes" affecting Australia’s retail sector, some analysts are adamant that overpaying for a struggling asset in a foreign territory was a bad move and top management should be held accountable. They argue that at the core of the impairment, which equates to about a third of the R23.3bn paid in 2014, was poor foresight by management. Portfolio manager at Gryphon Asset managers Casparus Treurnicht said that it was about time that top-level management was reorga...
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