Phil Clarke spent the last two years of his time at Tesco as chief executive of Tesco Ireland .

Dave Lewis, Group CEO, said that "after an exemplary career with Tesco, Phil J Clarke will retire from Tesco and his role as CEO in Ireland in April."

He went on to say that Clarke joined Tesco as a 15 year old in 1974, became a store manager at 20, and rose to take on several of the most important international roles including CEO of the businesses in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Japan and more recently in Ireland.

He added that "over the last two years, despite challenging market circumstances, Phil has worked tirelessly to make Tesco Ireland a stronger business and I thank him for all his work.

"Phil will be succeeded by Andrew Yaxley, who has shown outstanding leadership and delivered an improved business performance in London over the last two years as Managing Director.”

Clarke himself said he "could not have asked for a better way to end what has been a long and rewarding career in Tesco than having the opportunity to spend two years as CEO in Ireland.

"I believe that now is the right time to hand over responsibility and that Andrew [Yaxley] is absolutely the right person to lead Tesco Ireland forward."

Andrew Yaxley

Yaxley joined Tesco in 2001 and is currently the Managing Director of Tesco’s London business. Prior to that, he held a number of positions in the Commercial function as a member of the UK leadership team leading the Fresh and Packaged Food Divisions, and the Commercial business in Slovakia and Czech Republic.

Challenging times

Tesco Ireland has been through some challenging times in the past year with the announcement of 350 night staff redundancies in January in order to allow for price reductions across Irish stores.

Moreover the latest Kantar Worldpanel figures (16 March) show that Tesco is now only 0.1% ahead of chief rival Supervalu in terms of market share. And although Tesco remains Ireland’s largest supermarket with a market share of 25%, sales are down by 3.7% on last year.