Tesco’s Sir Terry Leahy to speak in Birmingham

University News Last updated 09 June 2010

In the week he announced his resignation, Sir Terry Leahy, the Chief Executive of Tesco, is to speak in front of Birmingham’s business leaders.

The head of the supermarket giant has been invited to address an audience of business professionals by Birmingham City University’s Professor D Michael Brown, the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the Chartered Management Institute and the Institute of Business Consulting. Sir Terry will be introducing Professor Brown who will be discussing research carried out, in conjunction with Management Today magazine, about corporate reputation. The talk will be taking place on Thursday 10 June, 6-8pm, at Austin Court, near Brindley Place in the city centre. The event is free but organisers have already run out of tickets.

Professor Brown, who is Professor of Corporate Reputation and Strategy at Birmingham City Business School, part of Birmingham City University is an expert on corporate reputation. He and his team have spent the last 20 years carrying out the research for Britain's Most Admired Companies (BMAC) survey to provide a measure of corporate reputation. His research has found that as much as 80 per cent of the value of a company is related to intangibles such as reputation. This peer perceptions survey incorporates the views of senior executives and leading. The survey and its results have made an important contribution to the growing debate on intangibles, the resource based view of strategy and corporate reputation. In his talk Professor Brown will provide some of the key findings from the survey.

Sir Terry Leahy had a meteoric rise, from a council estate in Liverpool to taking the helm at Tesco, Europe’s biggest supermarket chain, at the age of just 40. Just this week he announced he would be stepping down from the post of Chief Executive.

Mike said: “It’s an honour to have Sir Terry introduce me. He transformed Tesco from a struggling supermarket chain to the UK’s biggest retailer is so if anyone knows anything about corporate reputation it’s him. I’m sure we’ll all have something to learn form his introduction.”

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