Budget supermarket Iceland’s sneaky jab at Big Four management consultants
Supermarket chain Iceland has shared a subtle dig at management consultants on its website. There is a tongue and cheek reference to a £16m spend on external consultancy firms which include Big Four giant PwC, during a turbulent era for the business in the early 2000s.
The retailer, known for selling frozen food, published a corporate pitch deck style cartoon of a satirical boat race titled ‘Beware Management Consultants’, comparing Iceland to a losing rowing team dragged down by consultant-appointed managers.
The drawing takes aim at “upper management”, described as “sharks getting the scent of reorganisation blood, wasting no time in restructuring”.
It also calls out the appointed “panel of auditors” and their restructuring efforts, which it says includes making staff redundant, paying directors and managers bonuses, and outsourcing services “to India.”
The frozen food retailer refers to this era as ‘The Dark Ages’, first coined by its founder Malcolm Walker.
In 2006, according to The Guardian, Walker criticised his predecessors, former chief executive William Grimsey and chief financial officer William Hoskins, known as “the two Bills”, on Iceland’s website, accusing them of failing to turn the company round.
Grimsey and Hoskins took control of the company after Walker was forced out following insider trading allegations against Walker and a subsequent investigation in 2000.
An Iceland source told City AM the period where external consultants were hired “went terribly wrong” as they attempted to remodel it as a convenience store.
The spokesperson said Iceland “is a very straight talking supermarket” and the business “has no time for CEOs and leaders that haven’t got a real strategy”.
PwC on the books
Iceland was renamed The Big Food Group in 2002 after it merged with cash-and-carry business Booker, and Company’s House filings from 2003 show the supermarket said its committee “received external advice” from Big Four firm PwC and New Bridge Street Consultants for that financial year.
In January 2003, the committee appointed New Bridge Street Consultants, a firm acquired by professional services company Aon in 2008, to be its “primary external adviser on remuneration matters” but said it “will continue to receive advice, as necessary, from other advisers on specific projects.”
PwC declined to comment.