Mutual is beginning to claw its way onto surer financial footing under Dame Sharon White
At John Lewis, good news has long been in such short supply that it’s easy to forget the go-go years that followed the financial crash.
The mood at the time was perhaps best encapsulated by a remark from the then-boss of its department stores, Andy Street. “It used to be that every city needed a cathedral; now it’s a John Lewis,” he said in 2013.
It’s a warning to chief executives everywhere of the perils of believing your own hype, as the current management continues to try to unpick much of what went on before they were parachuted in.
The last few years have been dominated by store closures, job cuts and bonus sacrifices in an effort to bring John Lewis’s stretched finances under control.