Morrisons: New chief David Potts sacks half of senior management in bid to 'speed up business'

David Potts, Morrisons' newly-appointed boss, has sacked half of the company's most senior executives a week after he started.

Potts has been tasked with turning around the embattled supermarket group, which has lost market share to low-cost rivals in recent years.

The five senior executives to go are customer marketing and digital director Nick Collard, retail director Martyn Fletcher, logistics director Neal Austin, convenience managing director Nigel Robertson, and property and strategy director Gordon Mowat.

The former Tesco executive took over from Dalton Philips on 16 March and said he wanted to streamline the company's management.

"I will now be constructing a leaner management board, with the aim of simplifying and speeding up the business. I would like to thank Nick, Martyn, Neal, Nigel and Gordon for their service to Morrisons," he said in a statement.

Andy Atkinson has become marketing director and Clare Grainger has taken over as retail director on an interim basis.

Potts has wasted little time in taking the company in a new direction. Earlier in March, he launched a campaign to receive feedback from staff and customers and pledged to work in a store in April.

The company has also announced it will abandon its "intelligent queue management system," which used infra-red sensors to determine when queues were growing too long.