It’s four years to the day since Marks & Spencer dropped out of the FTSE 100 for the first time since the City share index’s 1984 inception.
It was a major blow for one of the UK’s biggest retailers – and symptomatic of a series of existential problems it faced. Share prices were close to a 20-year low; annual profits had slumped to less than £100m. But for newly appointed company chair Archie Norman, these figures were far from the only concern. Upon taking up his position, Norman promised a radical shake-up to fix the drifting business.
