King told Retail Week: “I continue to be a fully functioning chief executive of Sainsbury’s and expect to continue to do so should we receive a bid.”
He declined to comment on whether the Delta Two proposal would be likely to contain any management lockdown clauses, but was clear that the day-to-day running of the business would be unaffected.
“The most obvious reassurance that we can provide is that we’ve been through this process already and we’ve continued to trade very strongly. I think we can be blind to ownership,” he said.
If a bid were to go ahead, King said the incentive package put in place in 2004 would prove sufficient to stop senior management jumping ship.
He explained that staff cannot start cashing in their incentives until next summer and that if the bid was successful, this would simply be brought forward several months.
“It’s worth also making the point that we have 40,000 colleagues who are shareholders in the business. So, for all of these shareholders and share option holders, the key point is that the incentives are there already.”
Sainsbury’s this week poached Tesco development programme chief executive Dido Harding to head its 305-store convenience business. King said: “Our ambition is to build our convenience business by 100 stores over the next two years, but if Dido thinks we can move faster than this, I’m sure she’ll let us know.”
Sainsbury’s delivered second-quarter like-for-like sales (excluding petrol) up 3.1 per cent for the 15 weeks to October 6, compared with 5.1 per cent during the first quarter.
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