Dave Lewis (businessman)


David John Lewis is an English businessman. Since September 2014, he has been the CEO of Tesco. Prior to joining Tesco, he was president of global personal care at Unilever.

Early life and education

Lewis was born in March 1965, in Yorkshire.
Lewis attended Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge from 1979 to 1981.
After Thorne Grammar School, he went to university, graduating from Trent Polytechnic, now Nottingham Trent University, with a BA in Business Studies in 1987.
In 2002, he completed a six-week Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School. In 2012, Nottingham Trent University awarded Lewis an honorary doctorate.

Career

Lewis worked at Unilever for over 27 years in various posts. In August 2014, he left the company to become CEO of the British multinational retailer Tesco.

Unilever

In 1987, after graduating from Nottingham Trent University, Lewis obtained a post as graduate trainee at the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever, in the UK.
He worked at Unilever for 27 years from 1987 until September 2014. Between 1990 and 1992, he worked at National Accounts for the company.
One of the biggest successes of his career at Unilever was in 1992 when he launched Dove, a personal care brand, in the UK. The launch of Dove in the UK was seen as a success considering the fact that Dove is now one of Unilever's largest brands contributing $5,885 million to the company for the year 2014. A year later, in 1993, he became company operations manager for Lever Brothers Ltd, a subsidiary of Unilever in the UK.
During his 27 years at Unilever, Lewis occupied various posts around the world. After working for the company for 12 years, Lewis moved to South America in 1996 to begin work as Marketing Director of River Plate which involved Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Three years later, in 1999, he moved to Indonesia where he worked as Managing Director of Unilever for the business of personal care of the country. From results produced by Unilever, Lewis managed to obtain an average annual growth rate of 30% for the business of personal care of Indonesia. He served at this post until September 2001.
In 2002, he attended Harvard Business School where he completed the Advanced Management Programme before becoming Senior Vice President for Home and Personal Care of Central and Eastern Europe in 2002. He served at this post for three years. In 2005, he returned to the UK and worked as Managing Director of the UK's home and personal care business.
In 2004, Lewis and his team came up with an unconventional approach called the “Real Beauty” campaign as a marketing strategy for Unilever's Dove brand. This involved using everyday women rather than models in the brand’s advertisements. The campaign has received positive criticism.
In 2007, he was appointed chairman of Unilever for UK and Ireland.
In 2010, after working for the company for 23 years, Lewis became president for the Americas. In 2011, he became President of Personal Care of the company. He occupied this post until September 2014 when he became CEO of Tesco.
When working at Unilever, he was nicknamed “Drastic Dave” which was a reflection of his management actions which included reducing the number of products produced by the company from 1600 to 400 and for cutting jobs which led to a massive decrease of 40% in company expenditure for the year 2007.
Before the sudden announcement in July 2014 that he would be leaving the company, he was a candidate to become Paul Polman's successor as CEO of Unilever. During his time at Unilever he was seen as an extremely valuable employee and, in a statement, the company said: "we are very sorry to see him go".

Tesco

In July 2014, it was announced that Lewis was leaving Unilever to become CEO of Tesco. This was the result of Tesco’s previous CEO, Philip Clarke, stepping down from his post which he obtained in 2011. Lewis was scheduled to start work as CEO of Tesco on 1 October 2014, but he began work a month earlier than planned, on 1 September 2014.
Lewis became CEO after the debacle when it was revealed to the public that Tesco overestimated their profits by £250 million for the year 2014. Tesco has chosen Lewis to replace Clarke due to the many years of experience Lewis has gained throughout his career at Unilever working at various posts for both the national market as well as the international market. Lewis also has experience working with Tesco directly, being one of Tesco's largest suppliers of brands including Dove, Vaseline and Lynx.
Lewis began working at Tesco in September 2014 with a basic annual salary of £1.25 million.
His total annual pay for financial year 2017, as reported in May 2018, is £4.9 million.
In October 2019, Tesco announced that Lewis will step down as CEO in 2020, and would be succeeded by Ken Murphy. Lewis told the board he wanted to leave in 2018 and Allan, the Chairman said internal candidates were considered but no one was experienced enough.

Personal life

Lewis is divorced from his first wife, with whom he has two daughters, and is married to Helena. They live in Richmond, London.
In interviews he has stated that he likes to stay physically active and particularly enjoys running. He believes and has stated that: "Improving the health and vitality of our people is an essential requirement". In 2008, he participated in the London Marathon sponsored by Flora, one of Unilever’s brands. In an interview for financial website This is Money, he revealed that he completed the marathon in 4 hours and 18 minutes. He has also participated in the annual triathlon held by Unilever.
His other hobbies include photography, cooking, and playing golf and racket sports. In an interview for the London Evening Standard he revealed that being surrounded by the river and the park in Richmond, where he currently lives, encourages him to stay physically active.

Criticism

Lewis has been heavily criticized for not responding to calls to improve Tesco's broiler chicken welfare in line with that of KFC, Waitrose, M&S, and Unilever, despite a lengthy campaign by pressure group Open Cages. The Times released an article in August 2019 featuring a video exposé of birds displaying "serious mobility problems" inside of an intensive Tesco supplier farm, however Lewis has not commented on the matter.
In May 2019 an undercover investigation of a Thailand Tesco egg supplier, released by the Daily Mirror, found Tesco was serving Thai customers eggs from battery cage farms. In August 2019, an investigation of the company producing Tesco's own-brand eggs in Malaysia, broken by the New Straits Times, documented similar conditions. In response to the investigation, Tesco committed to ending the sale of caged eggs in Thailand and Malaysia.