Justin King (businessman)

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For other uses, see Justin King (disambiguation).

Justin King (right) with Chairman Philip Hampton.

Justin King is CEO of J Sainsbury plc, parent company of the UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's.

King was previously Director of Food at Marks and Spencer and has held senior positions at ASDA. King was involved in the introduction of Haagen Dazs ice cream to the UK and has worked for Pepsi-Cola International and Mars.

Raised in Dorridge just outside Birmingham, and schooled at Tudor Grange School in Solihull, he took a degree in Business Administration at the University of Bath. His contemporaries on that course included Neil Fox the Capital Radio DJ, Russell Senior the guitarist from Pulp, and Bob Wigley, now chairman of Merrill Lynch in Europe. Sponsored by Lucas, the automotive electrical manufacturers, he went to work for Mars upon graduation.

[edit] Sainsbury career

King joined J Sainsbury on March 29, 2004 and was seen as the company's last chance to win back market share from its rivals and remain independent - the previous CEO, Sir Peter Davis, failed to halt the supermarket's slide in market position despite a £3 billion investment in infrastructure.

Early decisions include the departure of several executives, the hiring of respected industry figures to the board, aggressive (in Sainsbury's historical terms) price cuts, supply chain changes, the dropping of the "Making life taste better" slogan and the maintainence of the company's relationship with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.

In October 2004 King launched his recovery programme for the company under the banner "Making Sainsbury's Great Again".^[1] In March 2007 Sainsbury's announced that it had achieved its ninth consecutive quarter of sales growth.^[2]

In September 2005 in an interview with The Guardian King discussed the dominance of principle rival Tesco. While steering clear of calls for a Competition Commission inquiry into the No.1 UK supermarket, King did call for changes in planning laws to prevent Tesco from achieving a 40% market share. As of 2005 Tesco had more potential development projects than that of Sainsbury, Asda and Morrisons combined. King also criticised Tesco CEO Terry Leahy for questioning the accuracy of Taylor Nelson Sofres market data. Leahy has argued that TNS over-estimates the size of his company's market share.