Execs Suspended at Tesco

British retail giant Tesco (London) has suspended four senior executives in the wake of last week’s revelation that the company overstated its profit forecast for the first half of the fiscal year by more than $200 million. Today, Tesco announced that Robin Terrell, the company’s multi-channel director, will take over Tesco’s U.K. operations.

The suspended executives include U.K. managing director Chris Bush, U.K. finance director Carl Rogberg, U.K. food commercial director John Scouler and food sourcing director Matt Simister. Speaking to London’s The Guardian, Crawford Spence, professor of accounting at Warwick Business school said, “In Tesco’s case, it has been losing market share to its competitors steadily in recent years and losing value quite dramatically in its share price in recent months. Rather than fix the underlying problems, they have been playing around with their numbers to try to make things look better.” Tesco sells 25 percent of all food in Great Britain.