Sharon White still needs to be clearer about John Lewis’s mutual status
D ame Sharon White can reflect that she won the vote that counted. The one she lost – on the John Lewis Partnership’s performance last year – sounds a bit like a relegated football club’s fans wishing the results had been different. Given the £234m pre-tax loss and no staff bonus, a thumbs-down for the business’s performance cannot be called a shock.
The meaningful vote at this week’s meeting of the partnership governing council was on whether the club should stick with its manager, or chair in this case. On that front, the 60-strong body backed White by an undisclosed majority.
Everybody relaxed, then? The partners can make up their own minds but, in their shoes, you’d surely want a clearer explanation of what, precisely, White was ruling out in her robust-sounding defence of John Lewis’s mutual model.
On one hand, she said she was “absolutely categorical” that “the John Lewis Partnership will always be an employee-owned business, no ifs no buts” and “there is absolutely no question of demutualisation”. Great stuff; that will have got them cheering on the terraces and beyond.
On the other hand, White then introduced a significant-sounding “if” when she addressed risks. She said: “If at any point the partnership were unable to fund all our plans through our own means, the board could consider external investment.”
How do these two statements relate to each other? How can there be “no question” of demutualisation if the board “could consider” bringing in an outside investor if self-funding looks dicey?
Does she mean that the sale of, say, a minority stake – which is what the original Sunday Times story said was being studied – wouldn’t count as demutualisation proper because staff would still own the overwhelming majority of
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